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iTunes Sales 'Collapsing'
Alien54 writes to tell us The Register is reporting that based on reported revenues this year iTunes sales are plummetting. From the article: "Secretive Apple doesn't break out revenues from iTunes, but Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good. While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring's rebound wasn't repeated this year."
The disaster that was iTunes 7.0 is a very likely explanation for this. It must have cost Apple millions to release a version of iTunes that failed to run properly on Win32. If nobody lost their job over that, it says some very bad things about the company's management.
I feel like this is the same story as "CD sales are declining!" The whole time you've heard that in the news for the past 6 years, physical CD sales for small independent artists has shot WAY up.
It's like you were looking at one of those stock charts that compares two different companies' stocks. The big famous artists would be that stock whose value has fallen from $100/share to $70/share. But the independent (mostly unknown) artists are like a $1 stock that is now at $5. It's more newsworthy to talk about the big visible stock falling, but the real story down here is in the huge boost that the indies have gotten from improved distribution / availability.
Check out this visual / geographic metaphor, too.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Legitimate users of iTunes have always confounded me. What with the way they dress and their holier-than-thou attitude.
From the article:
Speaking to The Register, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff warned against extrapolating too much from the figures. It may reflect a seasonal bounce that hasn't yet manifested itself. However, it might not.
So maybe there's something going on... maybe not.
More than that, The Register is not exactly a trustworthy news source. Think of it as the supermarket tabloid of Technology News. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like 'Steve Jobs an Alien Lovechild' on it's front page.
I would say that it's early to say that the sales are collapsing. They will eventually go down because the novellity of the service is past at this moment. That was was a cool thing (download 3-5 songs) is now not so cool. People are begining to realize that owning some bits it's not the same that owning the full work of art that a physical album is, with cover art, and full disc information included. Yes, eventually the iTune sales will go down, but nothing happens over a night.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I buy my iTunes by trading shells and trinkets.
After reading TFA, I'm not sure if what they're deducing is actually real or not. But I can tell you this - when I can get a real CD on Amazon for $10-12, and it costs me exactly that for a noticeably lower-quality digital-only version of the same album, then I see no reason to buy from the ITMS. I don't pirate music; I buy what I want... and the vast majority of my purchases these past three years (the time period over which I've owned an iPod) have been in the form of CDs.
The bigger question, though, is this: Does Apple really care? ITMS can't be making them any sort of profit compared to iPod sales; and iPod sales are still going up. All in all, Apple seems to be enjoying a healthy bottom line.
#DeleteChrome
No, this is just some bad data. If "secretive Apple" isn't publishing data, where do that get it from? Oh yeah, Forrester...
*crickets*
I'm probably missing something and that's okay. Because you can analyze numbers to your hearts content, the point that all the "analysts" are missing is that most of the DRM'd music that's been released is backcatalog, plain and simple. Did it ever occur to anyone that many people probably splurged on legal tunes that they already loved and owned to get it onto their iPod (or whatever). Now that they have all the favorites/classics/etc., there is no reason for them to keep pace with whatever of the 70% crap that the industry pumps out.
Maybe the industry is just slowed down while they wait for Brittany, Nickelback and whatever shitty country singer to release their new album? Stop thinking that small decline in numbers means THE INDUSTRY IS DEAAAAAAD. It's ridiculous.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Make your player truly affordable for a full time college student working a full time job, give me the ability to easily take all the songs I buy to any device, any media I wanna take them to, and we'll talk. In the meantime, I'll buy CDs from my local indie record store, and do with them as I see fit.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Did it ever occur to anyone that many people probably splurged on legal tunes that they already loved and owned to get it onto their iPod (or whatever).
Why would anybody buy a song they already own on CD???
Ripping a song from CD to either AAC or Apple Lossless is faster than downloading via a typical broadband connection.
iTMS is awesome for a very specific purpose: 1-hit wonders.
Anybody who makes an album of consistently good music, I'd rather hunt down a used CD and rip it to a Lossless file, but if I only want one or two songs from a particular artist ever, and I'm not too fussy about hi-fi sound, then $1 per song is a good deal.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When there was only the iPod as a really good portable player, iTunes was the only game in town. Now when you can get decent quality alternatives, interoperability is becoming a much bigger issue and DRM is like a doorstop not letting anyone in.
And when people can't get into a particular venue, they'll look elsewhere. And science bless the internet, there's a lot to choose from these days.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
I use a gift card. Is that tracked like the credit card sales?
So at last people are waking up to the hard DRM facts of life. I guess it took some time of real use to become aware that yes, they were now _paying_ to get _less_, uncredible but true. Probably they couldn't believe it before, after all, everybody was doing it, and it couldn't be that everybody was stupid. Somebody _surely_ had read the conditions before buying, and if nobody had found them bad (as evidenced by the number of iTunes downloads), then they were surely good enough. But the first time they cannot do something they want with "their" music file is I suppose for many the last time they buy anything from iTunes.
I'd expect the trend to continue.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Don't forget that the author of the article is Andrew Orlowski. His particular axe to grind is that he wants all of us to pay for digital music via a mandatory flat licensing scheme. That is, all of us would pay a bit (or a lot) extra for our broadband access and that money would be used to pay artists, publishers, etc. Thus, I'd take any predictions he makes about iTunes collapsing as either A) wishful thinking on his part or B) an exaggeration of what Forrester really told him.
Other industries improve their products over time. Where's the product improvement here?
Last time I checked Apple was still trying to sell DRM'd low-fidelity 128-bit MP3's.
Ultimately iTunes is a store for ignorant music shoppers who don't know that the music
they're buying is crippled and sounds significantly worse than a CD. When the public
becomes more discerning, its typically time to improve your products. Hello? Apple?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I can say I'll never buy from itunes as long as they have DRM.
All the music I have purchased over the last 2 years has been from Candyrat records. Here you will find some very impressive artists, not the run-o-the-mill, overhyped bands and singers. They feature "NO DRM", high bitrate MP3's (I'd prefer OGG but I need to bitch about it) and many albums have an electronic equivalent of the album cover.
Why would I possibly consider tieing my hands with DRM or itunes even ?
The article starts off by citing Forrester's authoritative figures:
"Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good..."
But then it casts a HUGE shadow of doubt with this:
"(The figures don't include gifts redeemed via the iTunes Store. While Apple can argue this does not reflect the volume of transactions taking place, it gives a more accurate picture of what customers are actually prepared to pay for.)"
I have no doubt that gift cards now account for a far greater percentage of the sales than direct downloads.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
How exactly did Forrester get access to a massive database of credit card transactions? Is this the retarded AOL search data fiasco all over again? Even if the account personal data has been scrambled, it's easy enough to figure out who people are just by analyzing the data.
When you purchase from Amazon, for instance, they know exactly when your transaction and for how much your transaction was. Just search the "anonymized" credit card database for the same time/numbers. Amazon now has access to every personal transaction you ever made. They can resell this information to their hearts content. If you don't like Amazon as a theoretical villian, replace that with AOL or Walmart or any large retailer.
Your two points work well together. Indie labels don't usually have much of a back-catalog.
Must be a slow news day in the UK, I guess...
...it doesn't. Movies, TV shows etc . are also part of the menu, so much so, that some are wondering how much longer Apple can call it the 'iT Music Store'.
By reading that article (burn job de' jour), and most of the comments here so far, you'd think iTMS only sells music. Man - talk about tunnel vision.
Ok, so for the sake of whatever, we'll ignore the other digital fares for a moment, and talk about music sales out of the iTMS. Check the calendar...what, a dozen days from now and Santa will do his fear-factored chimney drop, right? All those USD$79.00 2G iPod Shuffles that are being stuffed into stockings as we speak, along with untold tens of thousands of other iPods & iMacs, are going to come online all at once. The bounce for the iTMS will not be trivial, in any case, easily echoing well into 2007 - perhaps just in time for the iTV, iPhone & wIdescreen iPod to hit the shelves and then...bamn...another bounce.
Collapsing - give me a break. The only thing collapsing is the patience of Apple's shell-shocked competitors, as they try to endure being dragged around the town square behind a team of slathering wild horses...again.
Oh no! iTunes revenue down!? How will Apple survive!? That was the only thing keeping them afloat, right? Right?
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: iTunes is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered iTunes community when IDC confirmed that iTunes market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all listeners. Coming close on the heels of a recent The Register survey which plainly states that iTunes has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. iTunes is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent The Register comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Steve Jobs to predict iTunes future. The hand writing is on the wall: iTunes faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for iTunes because iTunes is dying. Things are looking very bad for iTunes. As many of us are already aware, iTunes continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The iTunes Store is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core customers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time iTunes Store customers Bob and Jill only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: iTunes Store is dying.
...
All major surveys show that iTunes has steadily declined in market share. iTunes is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If iTunes is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. iTunes continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save iTunes from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, iTunes is dead. Fact: iTunes is dying
Shamelessly plagarized by me.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I think there's more to the declining sale than just a release of iTunes 7.0. I'm no expert on how things are going but it seems Apple is expanding a bit too much as to what they offer in the online store. First, we had just plain ol' music. And that's fine given the iPod can only play music. Then it expanded to photos and then videos. Soon the store offered some music videos... then TV episodes... and now movies...
Maybe it's because of other things... but my feeling and opinion is that Apple should have stuck with music overall instead of expanding into selling music videos, TV shows, and movies.
~ Old Warriors Society
..the record companies aren't putting out much of anything actually worth buying, and people are noticing. its so easy to listen to what you're about to purchase. there's virtually no hassle at all, vs. a brick and mortar shop where you'd be more likely to buy an entire cd of something you don't like.
...Apple is dying.
Where have I head that before...
A few people seem to have forgotten that in the midst of this horric, company ending ITMS slump, iPod sales have risen at phenominal rates quarter after quarter.
Perhaps - just perhaps! - Apple benefits even if people stop buying online so much. Perhaps the iPod doesn't even need lockin to compete.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People are lazy. People are stupid. People do stupid and lazy things.
That about covers it.
Who the hell is Forrester & how have they had access to Credit Card transactions for 27 months ?
Where the hell did my tinfoil hat go ?!
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
But indies, as a group, release more and more often than the majors (that are just hammering the ears of the poor radio listeners with the same tracks over and over) and it's only logical that even if you are a hardcore .m4a buyer, once you bought all the pop you wanted to put in your iPod, you must start buying some real music (== indies) because iTMS ran out of pop ;-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Yeah... I didn't see any other store selling music in ogg files.
I definitely wouldn't pay for music that has some dumb DRMs on it. It's like paying for a book you can only read when in your bedroom.
Now comes the times of the Zune; what a success !
iPod and iTunes will be soon dead.
Microsoft rulez !
(Errr ? Ooops. Sorry).
-- Rastignac was here.
Sales are down since January, hmmm? Gee, I wonder what happens in January... Could that be the month that huge numbers of people who received iPods for Christmas try out the iTunes store for the first time? How about waiting a month and comparing January to January figures before drawing conclusions about a "collapse"?
For reasons earlier posters have done an excellent job of outlining, I'm skeptical about the article and its methodology, but even if they're correct is the situation really a grave concern for Apple? The (barely profitable) iTunes Music Store exists to sell (highly profitable) iPods, not the other way around. As long as iPod sales are healthy (and apparently they're very healthy) the effects of "collapsing" sales at iTMS would be secondary or tertiary concerns for Apple's digital music player business. Apple's big wins from the iTunes Music Store come through FairPlay DRM lock-in and influence in the music industry, neither of which is yet affected by these supposedly "collapsing" sales figures.
1) Big Artist music did really bad this year and many of the big artists sound exactly the same in every song so why buy more than just one?
2) The longer itunes proves to be successful, the more other companies will strive to compete with them and some of those are finally starting to catch up.
3) Competition among players (ie. zune) as well as most cell phones integrating mp3. People are realizing more and more that phones are the future of mp3 players and they don't want to invest in DRM'd songs that wont work on most phones or other mp3 players.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
So I guess this means most people have downloaded any back catalogue they want on their iPod's and are now just going to buy new releases. Logically, there are going to be less sales to those people.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
if you read the article, it sounds like there is a greater percentage of lower-margin sales happening (tracks) now vs. higher margin stuff (albums).
sales could be up, even if revenues are flattening.
Some of us wanted to be astronauts, some of us wanted to be firemen or doctors or schoolteachers. Orlowski, now... there's a guy who wants to be John C. Dvorak when he grows up.
We all need our goals.
I guess.
This is the BIG question that everyone should be asking!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The kids that I know of that buy stuff in iTunes mostly get their iTunes funds from gift cards purchased in stores. If this guy is trying to track iTunes sales by tracking credit card transactions done directly with iTunes, he's going to be missing a ton of business that is now driven through gift cards. Those credit card transactions will show for the retailer that sold the gift card, not for iTunes.
In the grand scheme of things, CD's haven't been around all that long. Cassettes and vinyl before that can conceivably make up a good portion of a person's collection.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
this is just like when dvd sales initially dropped off. after a while, people have finished replacing their vhs with dvds and sales will drop.
-- lol pwned
I have never understood why you would buy from iTunes in the first place. Your music is infected with DRM that locks you into only using your music with an iPod. To me, that is (and should be for everyone else) a deal breaker at square one. So if sales are indeed plumeting, I hope that it is because people are getting wise to the unreasonable limitations DRM puts on your purchase. DRM - Making it harder for legitimate users while doing nothing to stop illigitimate users.
It's like we've reached the end of the internet. No more to listen to. Done.
Start Running Better Polls
What, no-one wants to pay for music? surely not...
Yeah using the iTunes Store it like using the currency of a country that uses anti-counterfeiting technologies.
I don't want my ability to duplicate my own money infringed upon.
Device Problems In Search of a Solution
nuf said.
I'm guessing that the decline in iTMS sales arises from two things: an increase in competitors and saturation of the market.
The "increase in competitors" thing is pretty easy. iTMS was the first really popular online music store, with its popularity fueled by association with the ubiquitous iPod. Now everybody and their grandmother has a legit online music store, and the competition is only going to get worse, with online stores starting to abandon DRM so that they can get their music onto the iPod as well.
The "saturation of the market" is sort of a two-pronged thing, though. Part of it is that a very large portion of the people who will become iTMS customers already are customers. The other part is that, when iTMS first started up, people had a large motivation to buy a lot of music: there was a very wide selection with easy access, representing decades' worth of music. But as time passes, more and more iTMS customers will only really be choosing from new additions to the catalog because they've already exhausted what Apple already has available. Eventually, that cash cow is going to dry up.
In other words, the past few years for Apple should be considered a gigantic bonus - one that was the result of an excellent marketing strategy by early entrants to the portable digital music market. Now, the transient is ending, and things are settling down to a more realistic level. The question now is whether Steve Jobs will realize this and move on to the Next Big Thing or not.
I am from the 'album' buying generation and I still just find it too expensive. I will only purchase tracks of itunes if it is a single song I really want. In Australia itunes albums are $16.99 and record stores are usually $23.99 or lower (can be up to $30 in more expensive stores). This is just not enough of a margin to accept lower quality audio and being DRM locked. Don't get me wrong, I would be willing to accept these downsides but so long as the cost/benefit ratio was more in my favour - something like A$9.99 would be very tempting...
Anyday. Don't think for a minute that since Sony got nailed that this crap is off the plate. The vendor that enabled Sony's scheme certainly had to have more than 1 client involved, or at least it'd be a safe bet. What isn't a safe bet is exposing my various CPUs that I depend on for income to the ilk that "might" still be out there. It's not a fact as much as a hunch. To me the Sony debacle seems to me to be a case of "the one that got caught".
At that point, I pretty much went with iTunes 100 percent for my purchases, and audiophilism be damned - it's decent enough for my ears (lord knows why AAC has it all over Mp3s - is it the master tapes Apple touts? - I'd love to know).
Another dynamic of a typical market seems to be at play here: scarcity.
Indie stuff is rarer on the p2p networks than the major, big label artists. Its difficult to find whole albums, or much beyond whatever underground/sub-genre/or local scene hits an indie artist has had. If the music in question is a few years old, it becomes even rarer on p2p.
So if you want to scratch that itch, you have to pay for the tracks from iTunes, or the artist's website. (That's in addition to the willingness of the average music fan to support these types of artists directly).
Good luck with Allofmp3.com, as it is being/has been shut down.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I would like to see a mac mini with TiVo-killer hardware and software, but I doubt it will exist as long as Apple is selling TV shows in their store.
The movies and TV shows are in crappy quality aimed at the iPod screen size too, so they're a gross ripoff given that they're priced like DVDs.
I can't comment on the accuracy of your description since iTunes isn't available where I am living at the moment so I haven't been able to take a look at these services and I am to lazy to go to the trouble of making use of the loopholes. However, if that's really true and iTunes movies and TV shows are aimed at the iPod then Apple is barking up the wrong tree. Selling Movies and TV shows through iTunes is a good idea but they should tie it into Front Row and aim the sales at the desktop/mediacenter user not the iPod user. The iPod is a music player... period. I don't understand why Apple hasn't done more with Front Row and Mac-Mini combo. Perhaps they are so busy trying to wring the most out of the iPod they have forgotten about their other media products. I use a Mac-Mini as a media center along with an Elgato tuner and it works brilliantly but only because Elgato tacked a home made extension onto Front Row for their TV tuner which is a good thing since the remote Elgato ships with their tuners is (in my experience at least) complete crap. How hard can it be for Apple to create an API for TV tuner manufacturers like Elgato to use to integrate their products into Front Row? Still, it's cool to be able to control a DVD player, music jukebox, photo slideshow viewer, movie player and a TV tuner complete with recorder using a 6 button Front Row remote.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Two years ago blanket license advocate Jim Griffin predicted that 99 cents per song was "both too high and too low". "It's too low to pay for the burden of a developing artist, and it's too high to fill an iPod," he predicted It would fill up quicker @ 99c per track if they switched to Apple Lossless
R Tape loading error, 0:1
In the grand scheme of things, CD's haven't been around all that long. Cassettes and vinyl before that can conceivably make up a good portion of a person's collection.
;) Besides, under 40 makes up pretty much 99%+ of the people who buy music from iTunes, so who cares if the rare aging audiophile (who will hate digital music on principle anyway) has a kick-ass vinyl collection?
CDs have been around since *1982*. That is 26 years. That means pretty much anyone under 40 has been exposed to CDs as a primary source of music (and though I am over 30 myself, I can state for a fact my parents, aunts/uncles, and grandparents have ALL switched entirely to CDs - and my mom owns over 1/2 of the original Beatles and Stones on vinyl
"The grand scheme of things" is a pretty useless argument -in the grand scheme of things, printing presses are a new invention - how many hand scribed books have you read?
No, it is being changed to match changes in Russian IP laws.
Russia can't close a legally run company (actually they can and have, but they gained much more from that deal).
"when I can get a real CD on Amazon for $10-12"
I belong to Sony/BMG record club and right now they're selling new CD's for $6.77 delivered. Yeah, you've got to wait 2 weeks. Selection isn't the entire catalog. But it's pretty good. Or, my favorite method is to buy used from Amazon. Usually about $6-7 delivered. To me, that's the real price of CD's.
And for that price, I'm buying a lot of CD's lately. Mostly back catalog; re-creating my 300 vinyl collection from the 70's. In the past 2 years, CD prices have effectively fallen because of factors that I won't pretend to understand, but has to include the effects of piracy, as well as the ease at which used CD's can be purchased from Amazon, ebay, and a host of legitimate sources.
I can't be the only person who has noticed this. More to the point, I'm sure the record companies can see this as well, and I'm guessing they're very unhappy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"and science bless the internet" *gag*
The question about Forrester or my tinfoil hat ?
I just want to make sure I stock up on tinfoil if I need to.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Which probably means no more Allofmp3.com as we knew it - probably no more lossless/high bitrate files, quite possibly DRM, probably higher prices.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Popo is absolutely right. Digital music is a product that should be *improved*. It should come in higher-quality formats and be more and more useful (i.e. less encumbered with encryption, patents, and other nonsense).
Perhaps that explains the declining sales right there. Would Ford Taurus sales be growing if each year's model was the same or worse in mileage and handling than the previous year's?
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
...the register wasn't actually saying that iTunes was taking a shafting from the consumer public, they're just saying... that maybe those customers that are spending their music dollars somplace else may just want to insert an object of questionable origins into iTune's nether regions!
"I'm not saying that your mother is a whore, just that maybe those people who have had sex with your mother for money... may have a different opinion..."
All fair and square but the iTunes Store directory does not display the indies. They can only be found by searching or by people who know the exact URL. I myself am having a hard time trying to get people to visit my CDBaby music in iTunes.
So if a regular iTunes visitor won't find indies, how can the indies be thriving?
Just a thought... maybe sales are down because people have purchased most of the "good" songs going back for the last couple decades. Once you're done with that, you're left to purchase... today's awful songs. I'd bet that's why sales are down. Same way CD sales died once people had replaced their 8-tracks.
I use a Mac so you'd think ITMS would be a natural place to shop. For me, ITMS still does not offer the artists I want. But I have had great luck finding albums I want at online record shops and I've been spending money there like it's going out of style. CDs, LPs, EPs. Music I can hold and touch, that's never going to be in ITMS.
Right now, my latest record shipment is sitting at home waiting for Christmas. Inside are two CDs from 1986 and an EP (that's a 45 record) from 1989, which together cost me more money than I want to admit. North of $100. Can't get them from ANY online download service in any country. But now that I *own* these three things, I can rip and rerip and rip again five years from now and look at the liner notes and enjoy seeing the CD stack on my music shelves.
ITMS can't deliver that experience for me. ITMS doesn't have these songs for any price. Tell me again why I should use it?
Speed? Bull. I ordered these items from the other side of the freaking planet. They shipped on a Friday and arrived in my hands in the US of A on a Sunday. SUNDAY! Who the hell knew the USPS delivered on Sunday anyway? Well they did and the shipping cost was no worse than with Amazon. So do not talk to me about how long it takes to ship things versus ITMS instant download. For waiting just a little longer, I get to own the real albums.
ITMS who?
I have a nasty suspicion that a *lot* of people are technically ignorant to the extent that they believe buying it on iTunes is the only option to get it on to their iPod -- or that it is, in fact, faster.
.. ah, you get the picture.
In fact, building on your point about "hunting CDs down", I'd have to say that given the scenario where you want one favourite track of an old CD, and you know the CD is down in a box in a cellar, and you can't wait and you must have your music now (because you are a true child of the modern world and listening to music all the time wherever you are is a god-given right), then downloading that one track off iTunes is almost certainly faster than finding that CD in the box in the cellar, bringing it upstairs, ripping it
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
Why in hell would I want to drain the battery of my cellphone by playing music with it
(1) Maybe some of us come across a charger (USB port, mains) at least once a day so we don't have battery problems
(2) Maybe some of us don't want to have our pockets full with kit.
Or, bottom line, not everyone has the same preferences or lives the same way. And it's the lack of choice that customers don't appear to like..
Insert
Anybody who makes an album of consistently good music, I'd rather hunt down a used CD and rip it to a Lossless file, but if I only want one or two songs from a particular artist ever, and I'm not too fussy about hi-fi sound, then $1 per song is a good deal.
Which is actually quite ironic.
Because in that scenario, the artist that makes a good album gets 0c from you, whereas the artist who makes a couple of good songs gets $2.
I don't think the videos from itunes every caught on as much as they hoped it would. Good music doesn't come out fast enough. People buy all the songs they like and they slow down on purchases. I think that makes sense and should have been forcasted. I personally don't think there has been much good music released since the 1980's and I already have most of the songs that I like. I guess that could be just me.
It's also worth noting, that especially where the back catalogue is from a time before CDs, 90% of tracks on any vinyl album were filler and B-sides that no-one ever wanted to listen to, but had to because they were on the album.
There are dozens if not hundreds of bands where I like one song and one song only. Now it's possible to get just that one song and not pay for crap I will never listen to. The records companies are now reaping their just rewards for bad seeds they sewed 30 or 40 years ago.
The time for record companies to die is overdue. Please only buy music second hand, or directly from the artists.
AFAIK compliance is to start Mid 2007 - baring any other delays which let's face it are likely.
If worst comes to worst you know there is going to be an alternative spring up hosted from some other locale.
So don't worry
let's not forget the fact that the main target audience of iTunes (teenagers) don't typically own a credit card, and are using the iTunes prepaid cards instead.
I wont speculate on iTunes sales as the method the data was collected was sketchy. I will say that there are three reasons I see why their sales might be dropping other then just seasonal variation.
.AAC collection at 1$ a hit.
Vendor Lock / DRM:
Why on earth would I pay hard earned money for a music format that locks me into a single vendor? iPods are spiffy and all, but your music collection becomes junk if you change to a non-Apple MP3 player. Yes, there are ways around this, but none of them are simple and easy lossless conversions. People are starting to see new MP3 players come out to compete with the iPod. Perhaps they are taking a second look at their music collections and asking if they want to be tied at the hip to Apple?
Pricing Scheme:
Other online music services offer alternative pricing schemes that might be eating into Apple's business. Rhapsody has an 'all you can eat' service for $15 / month. The music dies if you stop paying, but until then you get to pick from millions of song for the price of one over priced CD a month. For people who want to explore lots of music cheaply and don't feel an overwhelming urge to collect and horde music, this is a steal. iTunes offers nothing to 'explorers' who don't want to break the bank. Download every song written by the Ramones on a whim with Rhapsody and you pay the same subscription fee you always pay and think nothing of it. Do the same on iTunes and you are out $150 and just made a major purchase. iTune's pricing plan works for some, but not all. Their inflexibility to alternative pricing models might be costing them people that are looking for something other then a
The Long Tail:
I would be utterly not surprised to learn that online shoppers are go for back order items rather then Top 40 songs then 'normal' music consumers. If this is the case, then iTunes has a problem. Online shoppers are probably consuming back order items faster then new back order items (that people actually want) are created. If I decide that I just love 1990's Ska, at some point I am going to download all of the good 90's ska that there is. Top 40 is not going to make any new songs to replace this, so I will simply stop downloading. Consumers might be 'filling up' on the back order songs that they wanted and not finding anything new to continue consuming.
iPod screen: 320 by 240 pixel resolution.
iTunes movies: 640-by-480-pixel video.
While not quite as good as most DVDs, It's certainly not crappy, and certainly not aimed at iPod screens.
Moron.
Far be it for anyone to paint a complete picture. I realize "researchers" need to be able to declare some manner of authority, been not calculating some measure for PayPal and giftcard usage is pretty twisted. This was pushed heavily last year with offers. Even if a sampling of users was extrapolated out and added in or something. Given that iTunes gift cards are now in Walmart and other major outlets for the holidays. Ah, well. If we're to infer that DRM is to blame, I'd certainly be interested in hearing eMusic's trends for another perspective.
CDs have "been around" since 1982 yes but they weren't the primary means for most people until well into the 90s. It's only in the last decade that your average family car has been a CD instead of casette, the arse end of a lot of ranges STILL have tape players.
Hell, I'm 26 and I've rebought a reasonable amount of stuff on CD or downloaded it that I have in tape only form. I wasn't CD only until I went to university in 1998.
I'll blame the 65% decrease in sales on the new version of iTunes which broke even the latest version of SharpMusique more than a year ago. SharpMusique was the successor to PyMusique. Both programs allowed you to purchase iTunes music from Linux without the use of a Windows emulator. On top of that, both programs didn't install DRM on your music (the iTunes program itself is what adds the DRM, all iTunes music is stored on their server without any DRM).
I bought a lot of music using SharpMusique but now... I guess Apple doesn't want my money anymore.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
yea perhaps people are becoming more savy and are unwilling to pay for drm'd low bitrate music. its artificially degraded product and rather dissapointing in todays dvd-a/sacd quality audio which is years old:P basically selling far from cutting edge quality audio which is further degraded for absolutely stupid reasons. seriously degrades percieved and real value of the product for many consumers.
1) Videos do not burn as audio. I bought the new Jay Z album. For some reason the main single "Show Me What You Got" came as a video only. Fine, I thought, "something for nothing!" .. Well, no, it turns out iTunes isn't smart enough to burn videos to audio CDs as just audio. So I can't burn the album to CD to play in the car. I had to buy the track AGAIN in audio format. I complained to Apple and they gave me a credit, but it still sucks, since I had to buy a radio edit instead of the album version (which is video only).
2) Woefully poor video quality. The quality of videos on the iTunes Music Store is atrocious. Even the average rip distributed illegally will be streets ahead. It's just like YouTube in terms of sound quality.. it's not even up to 128kbps AAC standards.
3) CDs cost the same. I don't know about the US, but I can buy an audio CD for the same price as an album on iTunes. iTunes is more convenient for singles, but I think most people over a certain age buy albums instead.
4) Convenience costs. You might get some convenience with the instant downloads, which I totally love, but it's at the cost of all the above.. AND the fact sound quality is worse than CD.
AllOfMP3 was one of the best things to exist and would have even been popular with a pricing scheme fair to artists and the labels.. but no, anyone who does something in a customer friendly way these days is bound to be shot down by the cartels.
I keep seeing this on slashdot. All I can say is (with my tongue somewhat in cheek) that you guys must be listening to the wrong music!
All the albums I buy have maybe 1 or 2 tracks I'm not overly fond of, max, and 10-15 that are good. And I'm not buying in any one genre either. Just looking at what I've bought in 2006, the following don't really have ANY weak tracks: Ojos de Brujo - Techari (Flamenco hiphop fusion), Breakage - This Too Shall Pass (dub-influenced drum'n'bass), Shpongle - Nothing Lasts (psychedelic global electronica). While these have maybe one or two that are slightly weaker, but by no means "don't want to listen to": Seth Lakeman - Freedom Frields (folk / singer songwriter), Minnie Riperton - Anthology (soul), Intex Systems - Research and Development (ambient and idm), Burial - Burial (dubstep / ambient), ICR - Day Trip (trancey drum'n'bass), King Curtis - Live at Fillmore West (soul / R&B), Sasha - airdrawndagger (progressive trance / house). Etc, etc.
Seriously... if 90% of the tracks on the albums you're buying aren't worth listening to, I do have to suspect you're buying albums by artists that suck, it's pretty much that simple.
2. DRM - the good thing here is that, in my opinion, "Joe Bloke" is starting to get the message about the evils of DRM, we have Sony's big f*ck up to thank for a that. People have traditionally "shared" their music and movies with friends & whilst I do not in any way support illegal downloads, lending CDs and DVDs to friends is something people have always done. Anything the media companies do to restrict that activity will fail.
3. Price - check out online retailers, even the music section of the local supermarket & you'll find CDs that you can buy cheaper than downloading all of the tracks from iTunes. Like HMV & Virgin, iTunes has got away for far too long selling overpriced products, all three of them are now suffering as a result - and good riddance to bad rubbish.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So this research takes into consideration credit cards only...what about the hundreds of pre-paid iTunes cards sold each week? If they aren't tracking that, then how can they just declare that sales are collapsing?
Umm isn't that 24 years, cause I cause born in 1982, and last time I checked I was 24. I feel old enough without having more years thrown at me!
iTunes is treating the world outside the US like an unwanted stepchild. Many of the records that are available in the US shop and which are available on CD here in Europe cannot be bought from the iTunes Store. So, what do they expect me to do? I bought a lot of music from iTunes when the store came to Sweden in the first place, but when even such main stream things as a Disney soundtrack isn't available outside the US, it is no wonder people are heading back to the torrent sites (or record stores for that matter).
While Tom's and similar sites have become flea markets over the years, I've yet to see detailed benchmarks in the Register. There are some info you can only get from these greedy NDA signers, and while they might be biased or downright lies, they still aren't available anywhere else.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
AllOfMP3.com is still very active. Visa has stopped allowing payments from the US to them, but that's not very surprising. They did the same with online gambling, while the overseas gambling sites are still very much in existence.
d =181919743 &d=12886483
Russia is planning to join the WTO though, and in the process may be enacting legislation to satisfy American trade organizations, because essentially, that's what the WTO does to other sovereign nations. At that time, which is sometime not that soon, it may or may not become illegal for AllOfMp3.com to operate under new Russian legislation. That is up to Russia to decide, obviously.
You can read their legal FAQs for more info:
http://www.allofmp3.com/press/centre.shtml?s=993&
http://music.allofmp3.com/press/centre.shtml?s=99
Of course sales will go down to some extent. People are buying songs, and then since they don't: lose the "cd", etc., they don't need to re-buy the songs. Eventually they buy most or all of the songs they ever wanted, and thus sales slow way down.
stuff |
As the saying goes: if you torture statistics long enough, they will confess to anything.
They are comparing the number of purchases on iTunes to the number of compact discs bought elsewhere. These are not analogous numbers unless we assume that every iTunes purchase is exactly one album, which is unlikely.
Regardless, the purpose of the iTunes Store is to sell iPods. Period. All Apple has to do is break even on iTunes sales (which they didn't do for the first year)... but if iPod sales are still up (as they are) then the iTunes store is hardly an indicator of anything except silly market analysts.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I think the rate of music downloads is not a linear curve for each person. One generally downloads a lot of music in the beggining, and just download specific interests as time goes by. As a greater portion of iPods are sold for replacements, they dont generate the same number of downloads as they would before. The solution? Increase the number of countries available to iTunes, or remove the restriction for a credit card issued in an "iTunes available" country. If I could buy at Amazon with my brasilian Credit Card, why cant I buy at iTunes?. Apple should start thinking globally. (geesh, this is soo 90s) www.donttalkaboutlife.blogspot.com
Dont talk to me about life!
As a lot of other users have mentioned, DRM is probably a big factor when it comes to drops in iTunes sales.
For example, my girlfriend has an iPod. She bought it a while back because it was the sort of thing she always wanted, and she really liked it a lot. It's probably one of her favorite gadgets, and she keeps her favorite music on that. Judging by how much she liked it, I thought that perhaps she would show some brand loyalty to Apple, right? Wrong. After seeing me use linux for a while, she asked if I would switch her laptop over. I made sure she understood clearly the benefits and drawbacks of using linux, and she still wanted to go forward. I thought the migration would be doomed when she started having problems playing her DRM'd music, but rather than blaming linux (like I think most people would), she instead blamed Apple. She's actually quite bitter for ever have paid for iTunes music.
Witnessing her reaction, I can't help but think that other people are going through the same experience. Maybe they didn't switch to linux, but perhaps they bought a new music player or are trying to migrate to some other platform. Once they realize that their data is locked away from them and that their software was designed to betray them at some point, they are no longer happy consumers.
"I have a nasty suspicion that a *lot* of people are technically ignorant to the extent that they believe buying it on iTunes is the only option to get it on to their iPod -- or that it is, in fact, faster."
I'd bet your suspicion was WAY wrong.
I deal with a lot of ignorant (technology-wise) people who all have iPods...I haven't once heard ANYONE say anything like this. Ever. The most ignorant ones tell me they still get their music from 'the Kazar' and think of the iPod as an MP3 player not an 'iTunes Player'.
Its amazing how much the folks that know nothing about technology feel no need to 'follow the rules' (the again, I knew one guy that used this to find his back catalog that he lost when his wife threw him out of the house years ago, and doesn't even own his own CDs anymore...I'd like to see the RIAA sue him for that!).
So I think your hypothesis is wrong. I'd say my belief was based around one single group, but I have two completely separate areas of focus these days (little overlap except when I'm blackmailing my friends into working a charity for my nonprofit side), and its the same belief from the technically ignorant on both (and they ALL come to me about this stuff because they know I'm a musician and a geek).
Anyhoo...posted anonymously because its a stupid argument either way, and not insightful at all...
Can someone make a note of this to compare with what Steve announces at Mac World in January? I am betting he will have a different spin on the same figures.
Why not use Hymn to move all your AACs to non-DRM'd MP3s?
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Wrong. The music company gets $2, the artist makes something like $0.10.
In any case, the public isn't under a mandate to enrich anyone. Do you send checks to the UAW when you buy a used car?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I'll only buy from iTunes when I can strip the DRM off the songs I purchase. Since they broke hymn with the iTunes 6 release, I haven't bothered to buy any music and have gotten out of the habit of checking out new music on the site, so I haven't even bothered to see if there has been a new release of hymn that fixes the defect in iTunes.
Apple has lost at least $100 in sales from me alone this year, based on my prior buying habits.
On the other hand, Yahoo supposedly has songs with no DRM for sale. I plan on buying some of them if they really are available and I like any of the artists.
And no, I have no interest in P2P or that other crap.
So when does Apple start renegotiating the agreements with the major record labels?
Always good to look like you are not making heaps of money when you sit down to share the proceeds, no?
Conspiracy theories...
Wow. Nice rant. Did he steal your girlfriend? Or do you work for Apple?
The Neilsen SoundScan numbers in last week's Wall Street Journal show downloads in decline over three consecutive quarters this year. Orlowski and The Register have always argued DRM services like iTunes wouldn't work in the long run.
When you've swallowed your sack of salt, you'll see they're right. This is a Good Thing.
CDBaby isn't an independent, its a vanity press.
Big difference...at the same time, I know a LOT of friends that have gone the CDBaby route, actually had some independent buzz before going there, or had a past life as an independent artist and their stuff is always to be found.
I have another friend that pretty much runs his own label out of his apartment, has maybe 4 or 5 bands on it (and its all pretty much the same group, with slight alterations in the line up and style) and I see his stuff featured on the genre front pages at least a few times a year (guaranteed to set sales tenfold doing nothing else). I've seen his work on the 'alternative' sections, the Electronic section (where your band is, actually looks like your albums are, but your band isn't categorized and isn't thrown in there...one of the problems of CDBaby) and a few others...
I also know, he hussles his ass off. He gets the press he needs. He sends full discs to the reviewers at Apple. He buys time on Pitchfork (for like $2000, you can buy a link with unlimited downloads for a month or something like that). The point is, technology doesn't make your album available just because you put it out there. CDBaby does no quality control -- hence the 'vanity press' moniker -- and it shouldn't, but if you go that route, expect to play all the parts of a label that they aren't doing for you.
I know if I were Apple, I'd be damned if I was going to put someone's CDBaby stuff inline with something that professionals have vetted. And maybe pros have vetted your stuff and thats why its not listed anywhere except on the backshelves? Who knows.
I listened to a few clips and it didn't sound bad -- but not significantly different from others that are doing this professionally.
Back to the main point, yeah, it does list independents -- ones that Apple likes...
There could be more and more people being bitten by the DRM, light though it is, in using what they have bought.
A friend of mine, militantly indifferent to DRM has now been bitten by it and will not buy from iTunes any more.
I'm a long-time Apple fan and I actually want iTunes to succeed. However, I hate having my media, whether music, videos, etc. being locked up by DRM. I HATE DRM! And it's not because I want to share my files with everyone. I just don't think I should have to gain permission from some self serving corporation before I can listen/watch the media I have purchased legally! Since iTunes came online I've purchased maybe only a mere 20 songs, and I purchase them only when I'm in a bind and need the song RIGHT NOW. Soooo... I say let's send Apple and the industry a message: FREE OUR MUSIC/MEDIA! DOWN WITH DRM! DOWN WITH DRM! DOWN WITH DRM! DOWN WITH DRM! DOWN WITH DRM!
I swear, once I find those CDs, I'm going to go through our entire collection and rip every one of them using some lossless codec and store them on a hard drive. Every time I purchase a song that employs digital restrictions management I get burned by it. Apple can take their iTMS and serve the sheeple.
!Viva la revolucion!
6 years of trumpet....
... well yeah. obviously works sooooo much better.
a few years of music theory....
a few thousand hours of listening to every genre and type, in mediums from 8-track to vinyl to piano roll to old 45s....
but i guess, yeah, i am musically ignorant.
i only listen to my ipod at work about 5 hours a day because, you know, im too stupid to buy uhm, some other product that, uhm, you know,
damn. it sure does suck being stupid. how do i submit this post now? i cant figure it out!
People already purchased what they want. When iTunes first came out, I started snapping up stuff that I had on old vinyl and tapes, etc. that I never bothered to buy the CD for - mostly from albums where I only liked a single song (which seems to be their target market). I've spent a couple hundred dollars on iTunes - but now that I have everything I need (and not being a big fan of new music) I don't think I've spent a single dollar in 2006.
I must admit I stopped buying CD's all together this year right after my computer was "infected" with the Sony-BMG's rootkit. It was the last straw for me. I don't buy music from any source that uses DRM which has limited me to mostly independent music sources like eMusic or Audio LunchBox. But now I'm finding better music through independent sources than anything I could find on the repetitive radio or CD scene. I can see how the independents are increasing. They don't use DRM and they produce quality music. I currently pay between $0.25 to the typical $0.99 per track and I am more than willing to part with my hard earned cash to support those who support good homegrown music and detest DRM. I'm not about supporting musicians $3,000,000.00 crib in Beverly Hills (check out MTV's Cribs at MTV.com), but I am about supporting musicians who love to make music. ;-)
No, you just THINK those records don't have "weak tracks" because you have such horrible taste in music.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
By the artist I mean the copyright owner.
But you're missing my point. I'm just saying he's supporting the shit singles + filler album because when there IS a genuinely good album he pays nothing for it.
Ahhh... a child of pop culture. Refreshing.
Except Minnie Riperton. Her version of Stormy Tuesday, with Rotary Connection, is unreal!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Another problem: PS3 = $650 = 650 singles or 65 albums.
Ouch. This is going to be a bad year for music.
Secondly, where's Sting this year?
[ Songs from the 16th century? oy ve ]
Where are the top bands with some decent output?
Why aren't the labels "Gaming" the System?
How about some alternate-artist approved variations?
Most new music has no staying power. TOP 10 songs/albums cycle in and out so fast that it's obvious that people are not digging what's being produced.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
"There are dozens if not hundreds of bands where I like one song and one song only. Now it's possible to get just that one song and not pay for crap I will never listen to."
In my case it's usual more than one, but I think you've precisely identified the cause of the eventual slowdown in sales of downloadable music. 90+% of everything released on CD is filler material. The big growth in digital music sales was due to an expanding user base, and the fact that you have 10% good music from a huge catalogue of previously released material.
The slowdown, either now, or in the near future will be the result of people buying the 1-3 songs per album that they actually like on the much smaller amount of newly released music(with some residual sales coming from new users and people augmenting their collection of older songs).
I've backfiled my collection to a small degree from iTunes. Mostly in the 1-2 songs per album way you describe. I agree 100% with the original poster. I purchased just about all I'm going to purchase from iTunes because I have a pretty solid collection now. New music is total garbage and because of this, my iTunes purchasing habits have mirrored exactly what has been described - slowed to a snails pace.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
"The figures don't include gifts redeemed via the iTunes Store" [because] "it gives a more accurate picture of what customers are actually prepared to pay for."
Huh? You mean the $50 iTunes gift card I bought for my granddaughter doesn't count as an iTunes purchase? I assure you that card is going to get fully used. And it represents something _I_ was willing to pay for. Why shouldn't it count? I'm sure those dollars are worth exactly as much to Apple and to the music publishers as those sales where someone types in a credit card number instead of a gift card number.
This reminds me of the days when every PC magazine was reporting that the top-selling software package was Lotus 1-2-3 when, in fact, it was Appleworks. The explanation? Well, you see, the magazines only reported sales _to corporations._
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It doesn't surprise me one bit that their sales are collapsing.
The price of the electronic versions of CD's is a lot. Online purchases need to be made cheaper for the model to work - as you don't get any booklets, additional DVD's or anything with your ITunes purchase. The cost of buying a whole album will in most cases be greater than going to the local Asda/Tesco/Walmart and buying it.
The Store Lock-In has frustrated a lot of iTunes users as they can see straight away that they are getting ripped off.
For example, American Band X only have 1 album on the UK ITunes store, but have their earlier 3 albums on the US Store - however a UK person is blocked from purchasing these CDs (even though they probably exist on the same big file system). This means that you end up having to buy the actual CD when you eventually get over on holiday.
Another big rip-off was the IPod games. Games aren't music tracks, but again it is a lot more expensive to buy in the UK store than the US store.
FTFA: "the ability to obtain pirated music is now so widespread the DRM looks to consumers more like a problem than a benefit."
I must have missed a meeting. What benefits does DRM provide to the consumer?
Early on, I thought that the iTunes store was great. But that was several years ago, and Apple's failure to enhance it with anything other than more content and higher but still crappy video resolution is pretty pathetic. There are still glaring bugs in the Fairplay DRM system, both in iTunes and on the iPod, that have not been fixed. Audio quality is still horrible, which is a shame given that iTunes and the iPod both support lossless AAC. And it doesn't help Apple that CD prices, at least in my area, have come down some; many CDs that were $17.99 two years ago have come to ~$13.
iTunes needs a serious code overhaul, Apple needs to address the bugs in Fairplay and the iPod, and most of all, needs to at least double the bitrate of music being sold before I'll go back. And I imagine that its safe to assume a lot of other Apple customers feel the same.
In TFA they say they get it from credit card sales, which firstly ignores all the iTunes gift cards I've seen all over the place lately. But brings up another point I haven't thought much about, regarding credit card companies freely selling their customer's spending habits.
make world, not war
There's nothing like Slashdot for a mature, well-reasoned conversation :)
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Also of note from the Wikipedia article: It isn't my 'fantasy' to vilify Apple here, but until it is possible through iTunes to move your music to another player in a batch manner, they are (perhaps inadvertently) locking users to the iPod. Apple doesn't get special treatment here just because they are the underdog.
Another elitist.
Regardless of your particular taste, I find it hard to believe that you don't see the vast majority of all albums as a few good songs immersed in garbage "filler material". Even the artists know this. If they released albums of entirely good songs, how do they decide which ones will become "singles" or "videos"? You're a rare person if you find even a handful of artists with a set of albums that all contain 90% "good" music.
I'll check out your recs, but I doubt I'll share your experience. I'll be happy if I like 10% of the songs however.
First you claim that the statistics showing iTunes sales are going down is "bad data" which implies it is not reliable, in the very next paragraph you provide an analysis of why you think iYunes sales are down which is a trend showing the statitics are probably right?
Your reasons for the sales being down does not make sense to me either for the same reasons others have quoted. People doing back-cataloging probably have done that already.
This report is apparently from Forester and Ars Technica have a savage review http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/12/ 11/6249 of it.
Briefly, Forester just do a simple average of songs-sold-this-year against ipods-ever-sold and come up with 22 songs per iPod this year versus 20 songs per iPod last year.
Two problems:
1. that's actually a 10% increase, not a "collapse"
2. "ipods-ever-sold" loosely means the entire installed base assuming no breakages or
upgrades (we all know iPods break, and lots of people upgrade them), so the increase
per customer is probably greater.
So what does it all mean?
* averages are deceptive, especially in maturing markets
* iTunes growth appears to be slowing (or maybe not growing at the same rate as iPod sales)
* customers have other sources of music to rip (CD's for example), and maybe Apple doesn't care that much - they're still selling hardware
ie. not a collapse.
The article only talks about the iTMS; there's no mention of how competing services are doing. It could be a fall in sales that's specific to iTMS, but it could also be that people are stopping buying DRM'd music altogether.
As other people have said, it could be that revenue received from purchasing tracks by credit card on the iTMS has gone down by 65%/month, but purchasing of iTunes gift vouchers has gone up 5000%. Unless Apple releases figures, there's no way of knowing what's going on.
The study doesn't seem to take into account gift cards. Their overall value is probably higher than previous years as users get used to them. The based on credit card transactions study can not be 100% relevant IMHO.
http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211, 40858,00.html
Here's a link to the actual Forrester report. Requires subscription or purchase.
When customers feel like a chump for giving you money they tend to stop doing it. Feeling like a fool far outweighs "doing the right thing." It's time for DRM to go.
The thing is, I know at least in my case I didn't own the CD with a lot of those songs, neither did my wife. Frankly, the rest of the CD was crap and I wasn't going to spend $15 on one good song. That's why I bought a bunch of them off of iTMS.
I read the internet for the articles.
The answer is, at least in part, podcasts. Especially free podcasts.
I'm learning Chinese and keeping up with Java news using podcasts. This didn't substitute for iTunes purchases in my case, but I'd bet it does for a large number of people.
I wrote parts of this stuff
[1] By which I mean the record labels. If the artists don't negotiate a beneficial contract, that's their problem. There are plenty of small labels out there that will give the artist a majority share of the royalties. If they sign with a label that doesn't, then they must feel that they get something of value out of it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... gotta figure that, overall, most accounts on iTunes have been around for a bit, and after one buys the music they're after - why would they keep buying? I've got the music I wanted, I haven't discovered anything compelling enough for me to shill out more.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
What store can you walk into that does not sell iTunes Gift Cards? The study itself laments the fact that the "larger" block purchases have all but disappeared from Apple's transaction logs, accounting for the supposed drop. I mean, you'd have to be in a pretty strange state of mind to believe that Sony's revenues could be analysed by looking at their credit card processing transaction logs...
With iTunes gift cards on sale at Wal-Mart, Target, Radio Shack, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, .... and everywhere, down to the level of gas stations and convenience stores, are we actually denying the possibility that Apple's sales originate in some other fashion? Especially after the recent articles about paranoid shoppers going out of their way to avoid putting their credit card numbers online? Without actual revenue numbers, which Apple is not required to report, the article is meaningless.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Because they still havent cracked the DRM in iTMS 6/7
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The thing is, this mandatory tax is silly because (a) I buy CD's (b) any scheme you come up with will be worse and more costly for me, otherwise nobody will agree to it.
More to the point, I'm hoping the current order collapses. It doesn't serve anybody particularly well at the moment except record company execs. We've got pissed off consumers, unpaid artists, record companies losing marketshare, and execs living the highlife over at Sony, BMG, etc. You tell me what you want to save out of that pictures. Because if you introduce mandatory licensing, it just props up the status quo. That's bad.
New music is total garbage
No, you're just an old fogey.
I think you'd be silly to make a decision about the hardware based on the iTMS. Lots of people -- the majority of folks I know, actually -- use iPods and don't go near the Music Store. It's ridiculously overpriced; anyone in an urban area probably has a used CD store that's easier to browse and far cheaper, not to mention higher in quality.
I am in no way a fan of the iTMS, but the iPods themselves are hard to beat. Particularly the new Nano (the metal one); it clears up my biggest objection to the old model, namely that it got scratched too easily. I've played around with some of the competition's flash-based players and they're all clunky and obnoxious to use compared to the Nano. (Which is not to say the iPod couldn't be improved; I'd still like it to have more tactile feedback and some sort of voice prompting so you could use it without looking at the screen, but apparently in Cupertino nobody drives a car and thus they've never tried to use one at the same time.)
The iPod, combined with iTunes as a music-management program and nothing else, is a solid product; the iTMS should be considered independently, since it's not like the iPod is restricted to playing music from there or anything.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Dude, you're the guy who got me listening to drum'n'bass! You posted here about your band like 2 years ago in another story about the music industry. keiretsu.mp3 has been on my playlist ever since :)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I rather think that is more indicative of your own browswing habits, Mr Owlnation, than it is of the Register's content.
Of the Register's 33 items showing on their front page today, I count 4 that could be dismissed as jocular items, the remaining 29 consisting of exactly the kind of news stories I would expect to see on a technology news site. By all means, go there yourself and prove me wrong.
This is entirely consistent of what I've come to expect.
I believe that you, however, skip over the items that I imagine you deem "boring" and skip straight to any items involving boobs or black helicopters.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Are you suggesting that people can no longer find the music?
How on earth would more offerings hurt the store? It would maybe mean less MUSIC sales, but is it your theory that people just stopped buying there because now they have a larger selection?
The TV shows I've purchased look great on my television. The idea that they're somehow designed for small screens is incorrect. A 22 minute TV show is about 250MB.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The Pirates, of course, buy nothing and screw the artists. (And yes, I know the artist's cut is tiny, but Pirates want it to be ZERO.)
I buy about one CD a quarter through iTunes, but when it was new, I filled in my collection.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Your post is an interesting mix of tinfoil-hattery and plain old FUD. The ADVERTISED RESOLUTION is, in fact, the ACTUAL RESOLUTION. Furthermore, as I just explained in a separate post, you're wrong about the "quest for ever smaller downloads." I have 9 "30 minute" sitcoms in my Purchased folder. The median length is 21:22 and the median file size is 245.1 MB.
That's actually a little over the "10MB per Minute" that in my experience is common of ripped DVDs and such.
I don't know about that, but I know that if I had an iPod, I'd buy two or three tracks from a CD from the early 1990s that is now out of print (and only available through used places at collectors' prices of $40 or more). I'd also buy some from a CD of mine that was stolen about 10 years ago and I never bothered to replace. (because only 2 songs on that CD were any good)
Just because I once owned music on CD that I'd like to hear again doesn't mean I still have the CD anywhere.
Okay, everybody say it with me now ... what do you never, ever want to do? Upgrade any Apple product to a point-zero version. Ever.
They almost always suck, and sometimes they suck badly enough to take your data down with them. Mac OS 10.0? Major problems. iTunes 5.0? A disaster. Aperture 1.0? Sucked (well, at least for $300 it sucked).
In almost every case, Apple has followed up with a point release that's made the software usable. Mac OS 10.0.4 was the first version I'd say wasn't actually dangerous to use; iTunes 5.0.1 stopped eating people's music libraries for lunch; Aperture 1.5 could have been a whole different program (but thankfully was a free upgrade).
Anything from Apple that ends in a zero should get treated like a public beta. It's obnoxious, and I don't know what the deal is with their QA, but they've been doing it for years, and with nearly absolute consistency. Anytime a major upgrade of a product comes out, you can count on there being a bug-fix point release in the next few weeks. This was my major reason for holding off on iTunes 7.0; I didn't have to go online to know that it was going to suck, they always do. 7.0.2 though, seems reasonable, although admittedly the interface is questionable.
Apple as a company, seems to work best when it's under the gun. Sometimes I think they put themselves there, by releasing a product that's just not ready for prime-time and pushing it out as an upgrade to unwitting users; but yet they always seem to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with an emergency patch. It's like they really don't start working until the pressure is really on and the users are screaming for blood.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Seriously.
If you're a teenager, working 15 hours a week after school, then by all means, pirate your music. I did it. Oh well.
But if you're, you know, an adult, and if you have an income, then I believe it's irresponsible not to pay for the things that you want. I spend $50 a month or so at ITMS and another $50 on the shrink-wrapped variety.
If you have enough money to buy a new TV, but still steal your content, then you're just being an irresponsible child. Why don't you just stop paying rent and squat? You'll have 3-4 months before you get evicted, then you can do it all over again.
I find real humor in the people that want things but think that they just should not have to pay for them. You're basically on Television Welfare. You feel that it's the responsibility of others to pay for the things that you want.
Grow up.
Meh. sorry, I don't do EMO and it seems that just about everything new I hear is whiny crap. I hope you enjoy your angst set to "music".
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Why keep buying? Because there's always new music.
My own iTunes purchases have dropped mainly because I've discovered eMusic.
Maybe people don't like buying hunks of encrypted data that are only songs when Apple says they can be. I'm not really comfortable building a large library of music for $1/song, knowing some day it may be inaccessible. I still have CDs I bought 13+ years ago, and I don't trust the iTMS to be like that. When I do, I'll be a much bigger customer. (Also nice: getting full-length song previews)
What do you expect? The guy compared the printing press to the CD press.
Who it is, is completely irrelevent in my example. You're being deliberately obtuse to avoid addressing the point.
And double wrong.
Artists do get paid for used disc sales actually.
No Comment.
While there is a constant demand for new music, much of the iTunes sale has likely revolved around people duplicating albums they either used to have, tapes they've got in a box somewhere, or all the one or two track purchases they avoided previously because they didn't want the whole album. Personally I've spent several hundred dollars there but mostly grabbing stuff I only had on tape or songs from albums that I didn't like as a whole, I rarely buy anything from iTunes now because bands I tend to prefer either no longer release albums or rarely do so.
Loading...
What I do is play the downloaded iTMS files while Wiretap records it to an AIFF. Then iTunes happily rips the AIFF into MP3, I replace the m4p with the mp3 in my playlist, and I'm good to go.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
If nobody owns the music they want, they buy it. Once most people have the songs they want, sales will tale off. It's not like nobody knew this was coming... The incredible growth rate of PC sales slowed and now companies like Dell are feeling the effect too.
For companies that sale popular products, saturation is a bitch.
No, for the most part, new music is crap. (I'm talking mainstream here)
Who's touring these days? Just about every single one of the bands your parents grew up with that have enough members still alive and able to hold a guitar...not much else.
Who's putting out albums? Well, those 'retro' bands again for one. And the contrived band-in-a-box crap. And a million and one bands that consist of a 'pretty' face, cookie cutter songs, and not a single real instrument in sight.
Yes, as always, there are exceptions to the rule. But the mainstream music industry is absolutely and without a doubt WAYYYY out in left field these days.
No Comment.
That was officially the WORST ANALOGY in this entire post. Congratulations!
As your grand prize, you get 3 free months of Software Assurance!
But that's not all: You're going to get a PERSONAL VISIT from an inconspicuous looking fellow. Don't worry, he won't be there for our benefit. He'll be there to serve YOU with a FREE, PERSONAL INVITE to a time-honored ceremony held JUST FOR YOU. And if you're lucky, you might just walk away with $10,000 BILL. No, I'm not kidding. We here at the RIAA/MPAA hand out $10,000 bills EVERY DAY.
How does it feel to be a winner?
Except those 1-hit wonders are usually "album purchase only" tracks for some stupid reason :)
I think the main reason is that it took this long for people to have some sort of data loss event (hard drive failure, laptop stolen, etc.). Apple's unfriendly and limited reauthorization process is a pain in the ass when everything else by them merely requires a drag and drop. Once the word gets out by a few people, "Oh, I spent a ton on iTunes and lost it all because apple won't let me redownload the files I paid for" or "I tried to burn a CD but I'm out of burns" and people will limit their purchases. I probably spend $100-$200 a year on music and less than 5% of that is through iTunes.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I honestly think that music pirates are all either 14-year-olds to whom stealing is "cool" and "rebellious", or people who want the various corporate middle-men's cuts to be zero as opposed to the artist. There is a huge difference between the two.
If I had only listed electronic/dance music stuff, that response would not surprise me. I'm aware that slashdot seems mostly populated by "music stopped with Led Zep*" types, capable of only a narrow minded knee-jerk get-off-my-lawn "that's not even music" response to anything electronic.
But considering I threw in a bit of soul, folk and world music as well - you know, what you'd call "real music" with "real" instruments - I am slightly taken aback.
Still... have you actually heard a single tune by any of those artists? I'm guessing you've heard "Lovin you" (Minnie Riperton) without knowing who it was by, and are making judgements without having heard a single note of any of the rest.
* Not that I've anything against Led Zep, I hasten to add. I love a bit of classic rock too, I just haven't really bought any of it this year...
Bingo! The same thing happened to CDs (only it took a little longer). Once the format caught on, sales were brisk while people re-purchased their favorite albums they already owned on LPs or cassettes. Once that process was over, sales plateaued and then started dropping, since people were only buying new music and as anyone over 40 will tell you, all new music sucks (nothing personal youngsters, when you're over 40, you'll think new music sucks too). The record companies tried to blame the decline on piracy and I'm sure Apple will try that as well, but the fact remains that each time a new format is introduced, there's an initial sales burst and then a leveling off to sustainable levels. Businesses unfortunately don't understand sustainability and believe that sales must always grow or someone must be 'stealing' from them.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"There's a problem here. CD sales have fallen 20 per cent over five years. The message here is not that CD sales are coming back, the ability to obtain pirated music is now so widespread the DRM looks to consumers more like a problem than a benefit."
Maybe folks are finally figuring out that treating your entire customer base like potential criminals is eventually going to stop working.
It's pretty obvious what's going on. Most of the people who want an iPod have already bought one. Most of those people have already bought all their favorite songs. I think what we've been seeing up till now is simply "upgrade" activity: people switching over to "MP3" from CD, and RE-buying the hardware and media to replicate what they had before.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I live in Costa Rica: even though I have a Paypal account (merchant account) with money on it, and have several creditcards (international),
.99 since a new CD is $20-25 and up, 30+ for a double.
I am unable to buy songs.
I walked into the local Mac store and asked for an iTunes card. I was told, that they are not ALLOWED to sell the cards here anymore.
Costa Rica is bad with piracy, but I know people who buy all their CDs, and they would all buy songs for
EVERYONE has a damn Ipod, still we are not allowed to buy songs. Not even on a "fraud safe" way, such as Paypal or the iTunes cards.
Plummeting sales ? They deserve it.
My next player IS NOT an IPOD.
Most people who were going to buy itunes and fill an ipod have done so.
Now they are at replacement levels of new customers filling ipods only.
Also- people do get better at finding cheaper ways to do things- I'm sure after initial itunes purchases, folks found ways to rip CD's, allofmp3, free musico offers, recording off xm or fm radio and other options.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I do believe that the majority of albums contain 10% good songs. However, 90% of the albums *I* buy contains 90% good songs (if not, 100%) because I have explored the music world and have found *my* type of music. Instead of accepting what the record labels and radio stations deem is a good artist (when in fact, they just have a couple of good songs), I've formed my own taste in music. And yes, I do have an elitist attitude towards music but I think it is justified because my opinions are my own and are not of the labels. I also believe I enjoy music much more than the average listener.
Another elitist.
:)
:)
... buy stuff that isn't rubbish, stuff where the ratio is inverted, 90% good stuff, 10% weaker. And in my experience... that goes for a lot if not most "independent" or "not aimed squarely at a Billboard chart position" music, be that soul, electronic, alternative rock, world, folk or whatever. Hence what I was hoping would be a relatively diverse list of examples...
I don't understand how, in this context, that is supposed to be a bad thing.
Elite = best. Elitist = likes the best.
What, I'm supposed to buy the music I think is the worst, and reject the music I think is the best? Just to keep up my anti-snobbery credentials? That doesn't make any sense. Of course I'm an elitist!
Perhaps you meant I'm elitist because I listed artists you haven't heard of, and you think I'm one of those "only likes music that's obscure" types?
Well, no, not really
The Minnie Riperton and King Curtis file alongside all the other soul/funk/disco I have collected... Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, that's all very mainstream, popular/populist chart-topping stuff. I discovered Seth Lakeman when he was splashed all over the media after being Mercury nominated. Ojos de Brujo might seem obscure, but they won a BBC Radio 3 world music award, so they're really far from obscure within world music. Sasha must be about the least obscure name from the whole of trance/house. etc... I also love all sorts of other well known stuff from rock/indie stuff like Radiohead and Blur, to pure pop like Michael Jackson... So, don't judge too quickly eh?
I find it hard to believe that you don't see the vast majority of all albums as a few good songs immersed in garbage "filler material"
The vast majority of Britney / Timberlake / Fifty Cent / whatever is being pushed by the major labels... sure. That's my point... they're rubbish, so don't buy them! Instead of buying them and then complaining on slashdot that you feel ripped off because there was only one decent track on them
Of course this being slashdot nobody is prepared to grasp the point that with a little bit of effort in finding strong artists you really vibe with, there is more fantastic music out there than you could possibly have time to listen to in your lifetime. Instead, they just slate my "terrible" personal taste or my "elitist" person.
To be honest I think a lot of people on slashdot dont WANT to accept this point, because they like clinging onto their crappy little "90% of the album sucks anyway" reason for continuing to pirate music, or even worse, pay for it in ways that don't ever trickle back to the musicians (allofmp3.com)
If they released albums of entirely good songs, how do they decide which ones will become "singles" or "videos"? WTF? "Singles" doesnt correlate with "good", and "not a single" doesn't correlate with bad! (Again, not if you avoid manufactured Britney rubbish, anyway). Single correlates with short (
You're a rare person if you find even a handful of artists with a set of albums that all contain 90% "good" music.
I've got dozens of artists I could say that about. It just depends how much you actually care about music and how much you're prepared to put into finding it, besides listening to whatever Clear Channel syndicated feed is playing in the local sandwich deli.
Personally, I'm a musician and a producer of electronic stuff; music is my main thing, I spend a lot of time performing or attending live gigs and club nights, visiting specialist record shops, reading and posting on music-oriented forums and blogs, reading music-oriented "dead trees" media, networking with other music obsessives in the real world, etc, etc. When you do all that, it's really not that hard to find way more music than you have time to listen to. I get the impression most people on slashdot griping about there being
slashdot ate a few sentences in the middle, sorry :(
Should have read:
Single correlates with short (< 3 or 4 minutes), catchy, sticks-in-your-head, probably upbeat, fairly simple, vocal focused. Stuff that works well over radio. It's quite possible for albums to feature songs which are stunningly good, but clearly no use for a single, because they're 7-8 minutes long, in a strange time signature or structure, instrumental / no vocal, and so on.
Loose the DRM and Ill switch to buying all my music there. Until then forget it, my player isn't an Ipod. I hope the drop is simply more people seeing the restrictions from DRM...
To most people, and really, most of the people in the world don't read /., DRM is something like RAM, but maybe more like ROM if they're an old timer. Or maybe it's like .ASP, or a .crm. They don't know what it is. For one thing, it's not right there in front of them. They can't see it. In other words, it's invisible.
As much as I liked El Reg back in the day, I know some of its reporters have stern anti-DRM bents. Orlowski in particular seems to hate it. He's not predicting the death of DRM, as he says. Nor should he. FOX News loves to say "Some people say" as a way of projecting their reality on the world. Some people say DRM is on its last legs. Could it be? We'll see.
Now, on DRM: I've been dreading it ever since I first read about it on The Register back in 2001 or '02. It was more terrifying than 9/11. Microsoft, controlling the flow of our data! No, say it's not so!
Well, it's taken longer than anticipated then for DRM to spread, and I'm not sure if anyone expected it to be coming up in places such as the Apple Music Store. But until it intrudes in people's lives, it won't be a major turnoff to the average consumer. Remember, in America, the less you know, the better off you'll be.
-- haaz.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And someone finally had the sense to ask that question! That's the first thing that came to mind when I was reading the article. Maybe TIA (or whatever the fed is calling it these days) is selling subscriptions to all the data it is collecting illegally.
As an iTunes distributor of over 400 albums currently in iTunes of all different genre's we have seen increased sales almost 15% higher every month for the last two years. I think one of the things that is killing the industry is that "major artists" are flipping their albums too quickly and it's so cheap to make an album these days. It used to be an album every other year for big artists. These days it's a new album almost every 8 months. It's hard for the little guys to coerce individuals to buy the smaller named artists albums when the big artists are coming out with the big guns every week.
The industry is enjoying this time where they can spend $80,000 on an album instead of $350,000+ but then they still complain that the sales aren't as high as they want them to be. I would imagine if labels spent the time and money to create albums like they have in the past then things would be back on track. They're making cheaper albums more frequently hoping for quicker returns instead of sustained residuals. Hip/hop especially is allowing for these 'quick turn around' albums. It's a sound created with lame loops and cheezy synths but layered with tons of vocals / harmonies. It's the easiest sound to create. Throw a few creative guys in a room for a week and they can come up with a whole album.
Hiphop artists don't "plan out" their albums any more. What they do is rely completely on coming up with the songs in the recording studio with the producers on hand. It's so much about the producer, less about the artist.
Hopefully things will full circle and we'll get more quality, less quantity.
...to the corporations is that DRM isn't an option. Fair use is the only option that we as consumers will accept. Of course I'm preaching to the choir. I stopped buying iTunes for that reason alone and I hope that attitude becomes the prevailing notion.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
The WSJ already had an article about the "stalling" of online music sales, claiming that it's happening for the first time. They include a chart, where you notice something interesting. The exact same thing happened last year (so it's not the "first time"), and then sales skyrocketed through the holidays as everyone got their nanos and iTunes cards. In fact, I remember the news coverage exactly 12 months ago talking about iTunes sales supposedly flatlining.
This is another article people won't even remember after December and Apple posts their biggest sales figures yet. There are so many iPods out there sitting in wrapped boxes waiting for Dec. 25th...
"Sufferin' succotash."
>and how much student loan debt? Uh, none -- thanks for asking. Hard work and high marks pay off on both sides of the two cultures. >Furthermore, your sentence cries out for a semicolon after the word "splice" followed by a comma after the word "and." This >is because you have two independant clauses joined by an independant marker. Sorry, friend. The coordinating conjunction does the heavy lifting for me. Your infelicitous edit would work much better if the word "and" were omitted. Technically I didn't need the comma in the first place but I used it to simulate the rhythms of colloquial speech. What I find odd is no one abused me for owning two ipods.
Hey, thanks. I'm always looking for new artists to check out in different genres. Eclectic mixes rule.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Does this informal study take into account the Apple retail stores? Or the use of gift cards online? In my experiance at the retail stores I have noticed a huge ammount of iTunes gift cards being sold, either by parents as gifts, or by kids, with cash, when they can't get daddys credit card.
No smoking sigs indoors.
Dude, I said that as a joke and I hate Led Zepplin.
(I like the Descendents.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I too would love to hear your reasoning on this.
I have to wonder if the reason is far more simplistic in nature. Everyone is arguing about the quality of the video and such as the reason. Could it possible be that for the price you pay on iTunes you can buy and own the DVD in original packaging AND rip it later yourself? Same goes with the music at $0.99 or even $.89 a song. If you look at the average number of songs on an original CD you'll usually end up paying more through iTunes and not have the original packaging. Also, good luck if you lose your HDD or data in any other way of getting them replaced. There are also numerous other sites out there that have been offering music downloads cheaper than Apple for quite sometime. Not to mention they "try" to lock you in to using an iPod only with it. Which leaves out the millions of other users who opt for alternative MP3 players that are often lower in price, with the same if not better quality and features than an iPod. Consumers aren't stupid, slow sometimes, but not stupid. They eventually will start paying attention to small details like these. I think the abuse and manipulation of their customers is finally starting to catch up with Apple. No worries. I'm sure as always they will put some kind of unique spin on this, and turn a negative into a positive and bounce back.
The other thing that gets me is that if you idle over to the Australian or Japanese iTunes store, while living in Canada for example, you find something you really want to download. You can't buy it there because it is not your local iTunes store. Fair enough so you go back to you local iTunes store and try buying from there to find you can't because they don't sell it in any of the other stores!!
This is what peeves me off, since I feel like I am cut off to a lot of good non-North Americain music. I don't know whether it is the record industry or Appl at fault, but it goes to illustrate that something is not right.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
hehe, cool! there's a new track called "Addict" on our myspace (I know, I know, as a techie it's horrible, but it does work for reaching 'normal' people). It's the first thing we've finished from our next cd which should be finished by about, um, March (hopefully!).
:(
I also uploaded the "Timestorm" album to last.fm. You can stream it all and download two of the tunes free (only 128kbps, which I find pretty unlistenable, but hey, it is only a taster). We've sold out of the CD now, but we'll still sell DRM free, LAME-encoded 320s to anybody who wants it. Unfortunately I can't seem to get CubeCart to talk to Paypal, so the actual shop with automatic secure download link presented upon receipt, isn't there yet. You have to trust us to email you the download link
Did I say on under the table sales? Sheesh, holy pedantry batman.
Go talk to someone that owns a used disc shop.
No Comment.
Propoganda!
Now that Zune and the Marketplace is released, someone needs "news item" saying iTunes is folding up. Who would benefit from that...
Hmm. That is a touch one!
*scratches my head*
Just-A-Jester
Golly! New medium, people re-buy all their albums like Rumors, Sgt. Pepper's, Pet Sounds, and Weird Al's Polka Favorites. After awhile, it dies down to just the occasional new song with a "hook".
And we're surprised it's no different from any other medium because...?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Heh. They were really just meant to be examples of albums I've picked up which defy the "90% is rubbish" maxim I M HO. I didn't expect them to serve as recommendations since I've no idea of the taste of those who read the post. But if you're interested in checking them out, great!
There are also some relatively eclectic chillout mixes in my sig. If you're not already a fan of rather abstract electronic/IDM stuff, I would recommend the "Snowfall Sessions" mix; I've had "the whole family enjoyed it" feedback about that one, it seems to be more accessible than the other two.
you're not supposed to buy music you think is the worst, you're supposed to acknowledge that not everyone likes (or even should like) the music that you happen to like.
I do acknowledge that. Sorry if it came across otherwise. My list of examples wasn't supposed to be interpreted as "this is what is good, I declare it so", just "this is what I've personally found which defies the idea that albums are mostly filler, I'm sure there is something out there for everyone".
For example, my flatmate is heavily into punk stuff, he loves bands like NOFX and Primus. Now, personally I don't really like it - but my point is, I'm sure he doesn't think those albums are 90% rubbish.
The writer is Andrew Orlowski, folks.
.Net was inaccurate starting from the title. Those quotations which are accurate are taken out of context, leading to total misunderstanding," is can be found here.
For those of you who've known The Reg for a while, that statement should be enough. For those of you who are newer to it, he leans more toward sensationalism and opinion masquerading as journalism than toward things like taking statements in context and checking his facts.
He's the one who started the non-conflict between Richard Stallman and Miguel de Icaza over Mono. The original article is here. Stallman's response, which begins with "Your article about me, GNOME and
Orlowski also had (and possibly still has, I stop reading whenever I see his name in the byline) a grudge against Google. He did a whole series of pieces about 'googlewashing', in which he accused Google of censorship, and another series in which he argued that Google News isn't Real Journalism.
On the few occasions where I've exchanged email with him personally, I found him rude, hasty, liberal with insults, and generally a putz. Back in Usenet days, he would have been called a classic flamer.
To the extent that there are real facts in this article, I don't know what they are, and I don't trust Orlowski to have presented them in any way but the one that makes him look like a daring investigative reporter breaking the scandal of the century.
Even assuming the premise of the article is true, and that Itunes Store sales have fallen dramatically, Apple will be the last one to care. The iTunes Store doesn't do much more than break even.
And for the sake of completeness, I should state my own bias by mentioning that I've spent a couple hundred bucks at the iTunes store over the last year. I'll probably do the same next year, for whatever that happens to be worth.
OK, I see what you're after, but I need some help with this part:
"a single real instrument in sight."
What is a "real" instrument?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
...said Nemus, after taking a sip of his $4 coffee.
couldn't these numbers, however biased in the article just be linked to ITMS starting to accept paypal
for payment?
As technology moves along, even the idiots are catching up :)
Um, he pays the used CD store for it. If the artist didn't want to have CDs sold on the secondary market, they should not have sold it in the first place.
I completely fail to understand your point.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
hehe, sorry. posting at work = sense of humour bypass :)
Let's step away from all this bullsh*t about DRM and whatnot. Let's instead take a look at the sh*t that is put out today. I've had a very, very hard time finding anything I liked this year. Pop music is pure garbage. Rock is essentially dead at this point because it's been so watered down and homogenized. I'm a heavy metal fanatic and I've been really let down this year by bands like Slayer, Iron Maiden and Black Label Society. Tool wasn't included on iTunes, so you had to buy the CD (which is very good). I've purchased a bunch of old 80's stuff I reconnected with. I downloaded the Halford re-masters yesterday because iTunes is the only way to get them. Otherwise, I much much much prefer CDs with HQ sound (not 128kb sound files), liner notes, etc.
So, consider the music industry in general is full of no-talent, emo, whore-looking pop "stars" and you see why both CDs and iTunes sales are dropping.
Did you actually read my post?
If you did, you would clearly see that I'm not talking about a DVR. It was, what, 100 words? Was that beyond the ken of your comprehension?
Where the money "would go" hasn't been decided.
The RIAA is a lobby group, it doesn't receive royalties. It predominantly represents the interests of large recording copyright holders.
But there are two royalties here: sound recordings and artists/performers.
Songwriters want a bigger cut than the small slice they have historically received, and digital is a chance to rip up the rule book. Obviously, the recording owners want to stop that happening.
So if you want a fairer settlement, start campaigning for it. It's up to you, and the game hasn't even started yet.
What did I say that made you think I was, for even a moment, talking about a DVR? I was replying directly to a person who was using Bit Torrent to download television. Unless *YOU* equate your DVR with illegal downloading, which would be pretty funny. I certainly didn't make such an analogy.
*sigh*
If the album has 2 good songs and filler he pays itunes $2. A proportion of this goes to the artist and/or rights owner.
If the album has 11 good songs on it he pays the used CD store. $0 of this goes to anyone other than the used CD store.
The point is he's rewarding filler albums.
As an independent artist with 5 CD's on itunes, I find it irritating that itunes pushes the top pop artists with front page placement, and those on a label are easily found by browsing a category & new releases.
If you're an indie, yes, you're on itunes but you're invisible without explicit searching... even deep linking is a pain due to the proprietary nature of the itunes client. Browse the categories, you're nowhere to be found.
Have I made a few dollars from ITMS? Yes, I have. Is it cool to be on ITMS? Yes, it's cool. But the lack of browsing or even a ghost of a shot at premium placement is a disappointment.
If the market were in fact about awarding things you liked, instead of paying for goods and services, you might have a point.
But since it's not, you don't. Sorry.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
How about the fact that alot of people are simply scraping by in this economy?
I'm here in south florida where 1 or 2 out of every 3 people you meet has an investment property on an interest only loan that is already upside down on their mortgage or will soon be.
Many of these people bought the most house they could get living on oatmeal expecting the price to go up to make a killing. These people have effectively committed financial suicide.
By Summer of 2007 this place will effectively be in a realestate depression and the banks will probably wind up owning most of it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
If Apple's .0 products suck, I'm guessing that the rationale is Microsoft's .0 AND .0.1 products suck, and Microsoft takes longer to get a .0.1 out than Apple does.
Listening to the Snowfall Sessions mix right now. Thanks again.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
You go on raving about Rhapsody and its $15/mo renting fee. Are you a RealNetworks employee by any chance? I couldn't explain otherwise such enthusiasm for a service that costs every month more than the average price of a CD, and that leaves with nothing to show for at the end of the year. Perhaps digital subscription services like Rhapsody may become successfull, but not before RealNetworks lowers their price a lot. Like $5/mo, or even less.
Why would anybody buy a song they already own on CD???
Because some people have more money than time. I have spent plenty of money on things that I could have done easily, but didn't want to spend *any* time on. I'm not going to be bother 'hunting down' stuff to save a buck. Money is cheap, time is expensive.
In what country? Which organization collects such royalties? Should I ask the manager at a local (Indiana, USA) pawn shop that sells 10 CDs for $20?
1. All the good old songs are purchased by those that are looking for them.
2. Nothing good has come out in a long time.
3. Some songs are not available.
You are correct that NTSC is 480i, but DVD's contain material recorded at 480p -- it's then played back at 480i for most sets (connected thorugh S-video or composite). 480p is the native resolution of DVD (720x480) in mpeg2 format. The video on the DVD is always stored in full 30fps format (when in MPEG2 -- can also be 24fps) -- interlacing is only supported for PAL and NTSC streams for MPEG2 encoded video. MPEG1 video (also possible on standard DVD) does NOT support interlacing.
Unless you want fewer than half the songs from the album.
since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent.
In shocking news, consumer goods purchases peak during the holiday season, drop considerably afterwards.
At Christmas, people get given iPods that they then stock up themselves. Those who already have iPods get given iTunes gift cards. Everyone has more time during vacations to waste on iTunes and for it to occur to them they might like to buy X. People are hosting Christmas parties and want music for them. People are already hammering themselves in to credit card debt and one more iTunes purchase seems much smaller than during the rest of the year. Nope, can't imagine how that period could create a contrast with the rest of the year.
Zoop is a video game published in the 1990s by Viacom New Media, not a music player from Microsoft.
Because PlaysForSure licensees are free to make devices that support both PFS and Vorbis out of the box. The iPod with Apple firmware does not.
I think you know what I mean, and I don't want to have the particular discussion that could easily ensue here.
In this context, I would mean any instrument that the artist uses to compose and record music on. Traditionally there'd be somewhere around 4 of these people that would create music.
Now, some unknown person composes a song entirely digitally, record company sticks a shiny face in front of it, records an audio track over it with them, and pawns it off on the masses.
Why does most of the crap on the radio sound the same? Well, in part because a ton of it is written by the same small group of people, though you'd never know unless you actually looked into it.
It used to be that bands would use session musicians to record certain tracks if they weren't actually up to the task themselves. Now this is applied to the entire process. It's a cookie cutter methodology.
On the other hand, I think that because of this, the indy band scene is just exploding everywhere...but the mainstream market isn't listening, and they really should be.
No Comment.
The disaster that was iTunes 7.0 is a very likely explanation for this
Specifically that they disabled iTunes 5 when 7 came out.
At that point one could no longer purchase music from Apple and play it on multiple hardware devices. That's when I stopped buying.
DRM killed the Radio Star.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Actually it is.
Becuase if filler albums make money, that's what you'll keep getting. That's precisely what the market is about.
AFAIK, you need an American credit card to download from the US iTMS - something which I, for one, don't have.
"I think you know what I mean,"
No, not really, I don't.
"and I don't want to have the particular discussion that could easily ensue here."
OK. Guess I won't waste your time.
Me? I think anything an artist wants to use to make art is just fine. I get to decide whether I like it or not, without making normative statements about the "realness" of their chosen tool and medium.
There's lots of bad art. I still don't understand what a "not real" musical instrument looks like.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I've done that... with stuff I owned on tape. And those tapes weren't even down in the basement, they were right there on the floor next to my computer. It's just not worth ripping in real-time, fiddling with input levels, or converting AIFF/WAV to MP3 or whatever. All of that for a lossy-compressed, analog-to-digital converted recording of a song on poor-quality media? No thanks. I think I'll just drop the $9.99 on iTunes to replace it.
Mmmkay. Or we could get more reasonably priced record albums. Me? I just don't buy bad music, and I won't spend $15-50 on a CD. (These are two separate criteria.) That's MY market, and anybody who wants to sell me music will play by my rules.
Or not.
No skin off my nose. My money can stay in my pocket.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I purchase market research all the time as part of my job. Forrester's is often pretty bad, lacking the methodological rigor needed to make it valid and useful. Also, using credit card transactions to infer traffic is dicey. The article does not say exactly how they did it, but I doubt that Forrester had direct access to unique credit card numbers, accounts, and amounts. At best they probably had # of authorizations. Therein lies the rub: two years ago Apple processed each song buy as a separate transaction. Each day's purchases were authorized together but just for that day. That cost a lot to Apple in fees. Now, Apple aggregates several days together, running the authorization once for many days worth of purchases. Additionally, a lot of purchases are now done as season passes (for videos), allowances (monthly charges instead of daily), and gift cards purchased at Safeway, Target, and Radio Shack. This shift in business strategy could very much appear as a drop in sales if one is looking at credit authorizations while masking the reality that sales are actually growing. The report mentions average transaction costs...but that's hard to interpret without knowing what is going on in the rest of the iTunes store ecosystem. I'd take this report with a massive grain of salt.
Why would anybody buy a song they already own on CD???
Well I wouldn't. But I've bought a bunch of iTunes copies of music I already owned on LPs, and especially all those 45rpm singles I bought back when I was a teenager. At the prices Apple is charging, it makes a lot of sense to be able to easily download a copy of a favorite tune that is clean and clear and sounds better then the old 45 ever did.
Yeah...I went through a burst of buying iTunes earlier when I discovered I could have all my old favorites back again. But I'm still buying music through them...just not quite as much now. I listen to satellite radio now, and sometimes when I hear something I like I check iTunes for it. My biggest problem with iTunes now is that they only have the song I heard that I want to buy available for sale about half the time. There's a lot of stuff that still isn't in their catalog.
itunes sales have never been a big money maker for Apple. also, many people use gift cards and itunes now even takes Paypal! I think this article was written with the intent to manipulate stock prices.
Well, in all fairness, it really depends on what the individual listener likes. Your tastes draw you towards independent artists where you feel a connection with their music. Not everyone feels that way, and a listener might feel that 90% of all music, regardless of the performer, is crap.
The music industry has surprised me at times. I've found some "diamonds in the rough" on *NSYNC albums that never made it to the air but are some of the better songs on the album. Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts are becoming two of my favorite country artists because of their B-sides.
Of course this being slashdot nobody is prepared to grasp the point that with a little bit of effort in finding strong artists you really vibe with, there is more fantastic music out there than you could possibly have time to listen to in your lifetime. Instead, they just slate my "terrible" personal taste or my "elitist" person.
Perhaps if you had just said that instead of insulting reader's tastes in music by saying yours were superior, then you might have gotten a little further.
My Sysadmin Blog
Q1 is always going to be higher because of iPods given out at Christmas, and people checking out the store. Duh.
Perhaps if you had just said that instead of insulting reader's tastes in music by saying yours were superior, then you might have gotten a little further.
Er, where did I insult anybody or say my taste was superior to anybody elses? Nowhere.
All I said was that if you find the albums you're buying are 90% rubbish, then that would suggest the albums you're buying are, well, rubbish (by your own definition!). Which seems pretty self-evident to me, to the point of being tautological; but despite that, to be on the safe side, I still noted that I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Processing credit card orders costs companies money. Depending on the frequency that you process them. But companies can adjust their frequency of orders processed and hold them for a few more days after a user buys something. This saves them money. So instead of charging immediately for each order they can wait a few days to see if the customer orders anything else before processing the completed order. The fact that the number of CCs processed is lower by 65% more then likely indicated that they are now saving a lot more money then before.
I can say I'll never buy from itunes as long as they have DRM.
You are not alone. It's a shame this related article is not mentioned yet. People's overwhelming dismissal of DRM'd music, even in the case of easy and well promote iTunes, leads directly to this story. Portable music owners buy more music because they can enjoy it more but they are purchasing CDs instead of DRM'd downloads.
CD sales might be declining, but it's only because the industry has been doing it's best to defeat their fans and take all the fun out of music. They have sued their biggest fans - those using p2p services and plenty of innocents by accident. Who wants to give their money to people who sue 12 year olds in public housing? They have colluded with M$ to force DRM on everyone though crap like WMP. The continuing dissaster that is M$ music sales and subscriptions should be a blueprint of exactly what not to do to your customers. Publishers have even put crappy DRM on CDs, making CD purchase a gamble. You know what happens to music sales the first time a customer gets their hands on a CD they cant rip or get their money back from? That's right, sales drop by one pissed off customer. They go straight to independent lables, legal free downloads or the p2p you hate so much and then forever consider your corrupted trash to be legacy. CLUE to Music Execs: Music is supposed to be fun, restrictions, intimidation and guilt don't sell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Which is why you don't understand that a lot of people think "music" today is horrible. Many people don't think "anything" is a legit musical instrument.
"anything" may be an implement for an artist, but I prefer to listen to musicians when I want to hear music.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
To be precise, what you've described is vorbis, not ogg. Ogg is the container, vorbis is the codec.
Nevertheless, well said.
$META_SIG_JOKE
"Which is why you don't understand that a lot of people think "music" today is horrible"
What YOU don't understand is that this is a generational argument that has been around since people banged sticks on rocks.
"but I prefer to listen to musicians when I want to hear music."
That's a tautology. What you probably meant was "I prefer to listen to styles of music I like and understand, performed by musicians who use instruments whose sounds I find pleasing." Which is just fine. What's NOT fine is trying to arrogate yourself as The Decider on What Is Music.
The ONLY relevant indicator is one's own, personal taste.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
When the iPod first came out, many of the people that bought iPods (and to a lesser extent other MP3 players) were early adopters, people that like gadgets, but also those that probably have quite extensive music collections. The had already transferred their home collections to MP3 and now were looking for other music to buy, or they simply wanted all their favorites in MP3 format. As the past few years have gone on, those people who first bought large amounts of music online no longer need to buy MP3s as much, and have been replaced with more casual listeners that hardly listen to their entire music collection and really aren't interested in much outside of that. The number of iTunes users has grown, but their appetite for music is less and so they buy less. I for one am not surprised at the downturn, but as new iPod models come out with the ability to watch videos/movies I bet you'll see a shift in buying numbers move from purely audio to video (with an adjustment made for the increased price causing some type of buying reduction, perhaps a 20-30% reduction). Whether this is the case or not, Apple will still crank out the iPod in vast quantities and make pretty decent money on them.
There's another component you're missing. The bulk of sales of songs from iTunes stems from use of the iTunes cards you can buy at many retailers. Young people, and others for that matter, do not need credit cards to use these cards, which account for roughly 60 to 70 percent of iTunes' sales.
this year, ITunes Gift Cards are available at WalMart. analysis per credit card usage in this case succeeds only in invading CC user's privacy, and NOT in generating accurate sales numbers.
however, being that there are a number of businesses that would like to think that ITunes is doing poorly, i don't doubt the earnestness with which this report will be parroted.
captcha: witness
for the win.
if it is such a favourite, then why is it in the celler, most people have their cds in a stack either in the bedroom or lounge room.
Most people that buy ipods probably do so because their friend has one and says "hey you can copy cds to the thing, borrow my cd stack"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Others have mentioned the poor quality of iTunes 7, but put that aside for a second and consider: iTunes 7 lets you download cover art for ripped tracks.
Were people just rebuying ITMS tracks because of cover art? Among my non-technical friends, "having the booklet" is a fair point of persuasion when buying CDs. Now that you get the artwork when ripping there's even less incentive to get a downloaded track. I'm not saying artwork is a big advantage, but people have been known to buy things for less.
---k--
</stupid>
Shame. I'd like to see that when it gets released. I remember the first time I saw that movie. After Pvt. Pyle meets his fate, I thought "Wow, that was good", there was a whole another havf left.
All I have to say is good luck with your efforts to police the internet by getting eveyone to add "In my opinion" before expressing their opinions.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Oh please. I went CD-only in January of 1985.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
You still haven't explained by what mechanism artists get paid for used CD sales. Holy Jedi Mind Trick.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I'm going to get off your lawn now.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
But I hoped they sacked the coders responsible for 7.00 , it was crap as dog poo. Darn slow as hell, it often skipped, and I dont care if its
a 24bit/16bit issue or wrong directsound output setting, YOUR CODE SHOULD WORK, and at least know which setting is more likely to work. DOes
apple only test this stuff under XP running on MacBooks? Winamp was always fast, even on a 300mhz machine, maybe apple should use that as a
bench mark. I think the latest one uses directx, but jeez it took a while for them to get that far, ofcourse if you are going to use totally
custom GUI controls, dont use GDI with overides to win32 controls, it'll be slow if you are not an experience programmer >5yrs win32.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Oh please.
Who gives a flying fuck about you?
Lets be specific. Do you mean that electronic instruments like keyboards, sequencers, drum machines, and turntables are not real musical instruments?
Or do you mean that these bands have "real" musical instruments but are actually just miming to a recorded track?
Or do you mean that only purely accoustic instruments are real?
Or what? It really is NOT obvious to the rest of us.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
All he's saying is that it seems rather dumb to buy music that you don't like. After all, would you buy a car you didn't like, but which had a nice stereo? Or for a better analogy, a painting that you hated except for one small part in the corner?
I'm sorry, I just don't buy this "most songs are filler material" idea, and I don't think any good artists do either. Maybe some talentless pop artists like Britney who are just puppets for their record label producers, sure, but real artists who write and play their own music, I don't think so. Some of their efforts may be weaker, but it certainly isn't filler material.
....Because you agree to a copyright. Because the person that CREATED the content gets to say how YOU can use it. It's their RIGHT. Maybe you feel that somehow you're "owed" content but you're not. I don't, of course, mean you in particular.
Call me what you want. Maybe I'm a moral zealot or a "straight edge" or if you're really old a "Square." But here's how I see it: I want to be able to control my environment. I want to be able to do what I want with my PC, my DVD Player, and my Tivo. I want to be able to develop a software program and license it how I see fit. I want to control what I feel is in my rights to control. Well, I have to give that same respect to other content owners and producers.
The Slashdot linux zealots (that is, most of slashdot) would be furious if somebody violated the GPL on linux source code, for example. There's so much reverence given to GPL, BSD Style Licensing, etc, but ZERO respect given to copyrights. How do you reconcile this in your head?
If the content owner says "I don't want you downloading my content" then it's wrong to do so. And as I teenager, I broke those rules. I did a lot of dumb things when I was that age. Everybody does. But as you grow up, it's time to eschew those childish ways and start acting like a responsible adult. A responsible adult respects other peoples rights.
Oh get off your high horse.
No one said digital music isn't music, YOU read that into my original post, and that was the exact topic I wished to avoid, for this very reason. That is NOT what is being discussed.
CRAP being the norm from the major players in the music industry is what is being discussed, and my point being that there is a LOT more of it now than there ever has been before, and MOST of it is cookie cutter digitally made garbage.
I know and love tonnes of digital music, and note I do call it music.
Care to discuss what's being discussed? Or shall you continue to hijack this so you can continue arguing from whatever moral high ground you've apparently propped yourself up on?
No Comment.
I mean when some exec goes to some meeting and declares that today they are going to create the next #1 hit for their current 'face-du-jour', digital pre-canned sequences are pulled out, plopped together, a voice track thrown on it, and it's released as music.
I'm not talking about musicians using digital tools and instruments to _create_. I'm talking use of digital technologies to repackage ad infinitum, with basically zero creation going into the process.
No Comment.
The "beta max ruling" that cemented fair use for home videos does not magically apply to television.
First of all, the backbone of Fair Use is that you have certain rights as a purchaser of content. When you are subscribing to Cable you are not purchasing content. You are purchasing DELIVERY.
Second, the standards for Fair Use very considerably from broadcast TV to cable TV.
Third, this is a question of FACT not a question of LAW. Therefore, any lawyer you talked to cannot simply give you a black and white answer. It's like saying "If I'm with a person and they get hurt am I liable." Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Questions of fact can only be resolved in a court.
But the idea that you're somehow entitled to all the programming broadcast thru your cablesystem just because you pay the subsriber fee is, *really*, laughable.
If you take these issues so seriously, I reccomend you check again. The "Beta Max Ruling" doesn't apply to TV. Don't take my word for it, call one of your lawyer friends.
=)
sorry, just not a fan of today's "music". And believe me, I am not alone. Defend it all you want. Call us troglodytes because we don't see a turntable is a musical instrument, etc... But I believe the proof is in the pudding(sales records). Granted, as people get older, they tend to buy less music. But My purchasing has groud to a halt as I've almost NOTHING of redeeming value. And I have stuff from Pantera, to John Denver, to Dr. Dre in my library. So I know it's not ALL me.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Since the youth are a major market for the iTS, it's difficult to pull a certain conclusion from the figures based on credit cards alone. Children now don't have to bug their parents to use their CC to buy songs over iTS, they just pick up a prepaid.
Also of note is that since the video store has launched millions of full length movies have been purchased, so the iTS couldn't be doing too bad.
Overall it's just the consumer that gets hurt by DRM.. as the article points out, Apple is still selling droves of their iPod multimedia player.
I'm not defending ANYTHING. I don't happen to like Top 40 music, either. But there's way more good music than I have time to listen to, and I'm more interested in finding good stuff than complaining about the fact that there exists crap.
90% of everything is crap. If it used to be 89%, and now it's 91%, who cares?
Call me crazy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What high horse? I'm still trying to figure out what a "real" instrument is. You're the one being all oblique.
"CRAP being the norm from the major players in the music industry is what is being discussed, and my point being that there is a LOT more of it now than there ever has been before, and MOST of it is cookie cutter digitally made garbage."
Crap is always the norm. I don't care about the major players in the music industry, and the partial fraction of good stuff is largely irrelevant, as long as there's more of it than I could ever conceivably listen to, which is the case.
I don't know what "digitally made" has to do with "cookie cutter garbage". I seriously don't understand that. There are musicians who would assert that it's not a musical instrument if you have to plug it in, and I think they're equally short-sighted.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Well congratulations.
But if you think you're the norm you're crazy.
Ah, the continuing saga of pundits who should not be allowed to work with numbers and write, and the bloggers who don't read that which was poorly written.
1) The folks at Forrester who conducted the original piece need a refresher course in statistically valid samples. Looking at 2,000 credit card accounts when reviewing a $1B in sales doesn't cut it.
2) If it took you 3 years to reach sales of 1 Billion (yes, Billion with a "B") units, and in the past year you sold ANOTHER Billion units that's NOT a decrease. [Check the sales graph. Units on the vertical are in Millions.]
3) There is a big difference in rate of sales and rate of sales growth. The rate of growth may be down slightly, but the rate of sales is still HUGE (see: 1 Billion in tunes alone this year)
For more info, check this article on Blackfriars.
Super.
It's just a shame we weren't talking about you but instead the original guy I replied to before the mouthbreather brigade leapt in.
And you know you are the norm because...?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I've no idea why the would do that.
Using Google Image search or Sloth Radio allowed me to get cover art for practically all my albums.
(And using pearLyrics got me practically all the lyrics which iTunes still doesn't provide.)
You seriously think the average consumer stopped buying tapes and LPs in 1985?
Lest you say that the Register is not a trusty new source, Canada's leading paper, The Globe and Mail ran a 2/3 page story on this today in the Business section.
I question Forrester's reliability, on the other hand. But the press does love a controversy.
-Stu
The LP started its decline shortly after that, and cassettes peaked in 1989 so, while, of course, people didn't stop buying tapes and LPs in 1985, they sure stopped way before 1998.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The TV shows are great - did you miss your favorite show once? $2 bucks and you got it.
(Every Sci-Fi Fan should download the Stargate '200' Episode now -
it's packed full of puns and spoofs of other SciFi shows - very funny stuff, best show ever!)
iTunes lacks a 'DVD to iPod' button - it needs one.
iTunes also needs a 'Burn to DVD' button - why download a 2 hour movie, if you can't play it on your TV?
I imagine over time the Song sales will plummet into the ground.
After the first 15,000 songs - do you really need to buy another one?
The occasional TV or Movie is ok, but HOW can you buy them with Apples Tiny 60GB/80GB Hard Drives - Pathetic.
Apple shouldn't even sell one machine with less than 100 GB Hard Drive.
The Music Videos are good, better now in 640x480 - an actually viewable experience.
The early 320x240 videos are a worthless joke.
Once you've bought all the music you'll ever need, (including the 12 CDs for the price of 1!),
that leaves your favorite movies, and they are by far cheaper over at Blockbuster, Netflix, or Hollywood Video.
The TV shows are a growth area - cheap enough to enjoy - disposable entertainment - no interruptions.
But once you have watched/listened to all you wanted to buy, you can still subscribe to dozens of free podcasts,
Podcasts let you learn the latest science, enjoy the latest entertainment, learn a new language, or catch up on interesting topics (like TikiBar!)
After you've grown bored with music, seen the latest music videos, grown tired of movies, and had your fill of podcasts,
well - iTunes will depend on the 'Long Tail' model of selling a little here and there of everything,
The monopolistic practice of DRMing content to Only run on Apple products - is not a successful plan for a business model.
Archos by far has a better media player - with web browsing, web mail, WiFi, touch screen, video, photos, music, TV DVR.
The Archos products make the current iPod look like the outdated 1990s product that it is.
Archos 604 WiFi
What the iPod wish it could be.
Found my Archos 604 WiFi at Sam's Club
I love harping on clueless Lusers as much as anyone, but I don't think there's anyone who thinks buying music from the iTMS is the only way to fill an iPod. In fact, I'd wager it goes quite the other way--tons of people probably buy iPods not even knowing that the iTMS exists, unless they happen to leave the default 'take me to the iTMS' button set and go there instead of their library. Even so, they probably just think it's an ad for something and pop in a CD and start ripping, or they call their friends with iPods and ask them how to get all their downloaded music onto it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
We need to remind ourselves that physical product is merely a container for rights - and this container may take many formats. Looking at the rise of superior quality packaging, the book may well be the container that record companies adopt for premium product.
Imagine that, buying your rights one song at a time from someone else who owns them all. When I write something for publication, I have no idea that what I'm doing is creating rights that will be sold to others, rather than sharing knowledge and opinions. What exactly those others will do with those rights that I can't or why I did not have them to sell myself is beyond me. I thought copyright was a time limited right created by government to encourage publishing back in the days when that was rare and expensive. No, I don't get where this guy is coming from at all.
His blanket license, where everyone is forced to pay to some industry serving organization, like it or not, is an abomination. It's also a deal that has been overwhelmingly rejected as anyone who follows the Microsoft music story can tell you.
None of that, however, makes the iTunes situation any better. It has not caught on and it's not going to.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That said, there's precious little I've heard from "turntable artists" that sounds good. (And as long as we're talking "anything goes in art", I also object to Duchamp's Fountain, and assert that Roy Lichtenstein was a talentless hack!)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Apple can't sell you something it does not have the rights to sell. That is like blaming a BMW dealership for not selling you Mercedes (though of course arrangements can/do happen).
GPL Deconstructed
Imagine:
(iTunes 6)
Average user puts CD in computer, rips song, no artwork. Declares,"lame!," types song name in itms search field, clicks 1-click buy. Stop.
Next song, average user says, "fuck it", types in itms search field, clicks 1-click buy. Stop.
(iTunes 7)
iTunes upgrade says "new! we'll give you the artwork anyways!"
Average user puts CD in computer, rips song, artwork auto-downloaded. Stop.
Now, as easy as it is for you or I to:
Cmd-tab to browser, type "gim songname albumname" into the yubnub searchfield, click the best image, drag the image to iTunes, Stop.
The average user is not going to do this. They don't even know that they can do this. Even if they did, they're too lazy to do this.
I've even shown some people how to do this (it's really only 3 steps), 2 hours later they don't know how or don't care.
Most people don't care to know how to do anything requiring even the simplest of steps for the most marginal amount of extra time. Changing the oil in your car requires fewer than 4 tools and less than 30 minutes. Yet most people would rather just spend $60 at the jiffy-lube and spend the same amount of time waiting.
---k--
</stupid>
If Apple didn't care you would be able to use FairPlay in other MP3 players and iPods would accept other forms of DRM. The raison d'etre for FairPlay, and the only reason for its continued existance, is to keep users shackled to iPods. Nothing more, nothing less. Apple cares because if people aren't buying FairPlay music from iTMS then their strategy is not working. Their ability to compete on grounds other than design and usability (in which nobody can touch Apple but things are rapidly changing) will soon go away.
I, for one, have over 2,500 tracks on my iPod of which exactly 7 are FairPlay that I got for free from iTMS (I forget why they gave them to me). The rest are from CDs I bought and ripped. In fact, I have 8 additional free tracks on my iTunes account which I have not used. I just hate to use them for music that I like as the quality generally stinks and I know I will not be able to take them with me when/if I switch to a different MP3 player. I save them for crap music my wife makes me download for her.
I think we are seeing a second generation of people who see all the shiny non-apple palyers available but know they cannot move because they would have to re-purchase all their music. These people are probably staying with Apple for the time being but are not about to dig themselves a bigger hole. As for new users, they are more educated on the insidious evil that is DRM and are probably avoiding it like the plague.
You're not buying in just one genre? All I see listed is a bunch of electronic crap.
The article makes an interesting point, it keeps coming back to the fact that consumers are starting to wise up about DRM. Once burnt, twice shy.
However the most amusing quote has to be:
"DRM looks to consumers more like a problem than a benefit."
Bad idea to use a story from 2005 that says people were still buying casettes, if in smaller quantities, even then.
You feel entitled to "copy and share" other peoples property. This sense of entitlement is how you justify what you do. As I said, every person that breaks the law has a way to justify it. This is yours.
The issue here is that when you accept content you are implying agreement to a license. The only way for you to avoid commitment to that license is to NOT ACCEPT THE CONTENT. This license--this PROMISE between you and the person presenting the content to you--says 'I agree to follow the wishes of the person that created this.' If those wishes are 'Freeware' then so be it. But if they're not, then you're breaking your word.
I love how your post reverses the flow of information. Your argument is that the rights of people are "pruned" in order to give content owners the rights to control their work. Do you not realize that if it weren't for the content owner, the content wouldn't exist?
You're saying that a child should not have to listen to his parents because doing so is a violation of the childs rights. That the child doesn't believe he should be forced to give up his rights so his parent can have the right to control them.
This is a joke. It's like saying that I should not be able to keep trespassers out of my house because doing so is taking the rights from civilization to go where they please.
It goes like this: There would be no benefit to human civilization if people didn't do the hard work of actually creating something. Therefore, in exchange for creation, you are given the legal right to control your creation.
How arrogant are you to assume that you're entitled to content that someone else created? And who are you to say that doing so would be a benefit to human civilization?
You posted this comment recently in another thread:
... So right here you're defending the virtues of GPL. Where do you get-off picking and choosing which content owners you respect?
"Actually you're wrong. After 20 years someone could _still_ take the once GPLed code, close it up, and restrict how people can use and copy it. How actually would the GPL _preserve_ freedom of the code, if it goes BSD after 20 years? Then what would be the point of starting as GPL in the first place?"
That's what I've done; I've currently ripped over 100 GB of WAV files from my discs. If you do decide to go this route, be prepared to spend a significant amount of time. A disc ripped using a DVD drive takes about five minutes on my machine; I actually used multiple drives simultaneously so I got about 3 discs done every ten minutes. So, for a meager 200 disc collection, you're looking at about ten hours of effort.
Once your music is on a server though, it's quite nice. I've setup NFS and Samba shares on my wireless network at home so I just have to boot my laptop up and I have access to all of my music anywhere in the house. I've also connected a server directly to my A/V receiver (Denon 2805AVR) which has an RS232 based control interface so I can turn the stereo on and select tracks to play all from my laptop.
I'm with the original poster here - I may be old school, but I tend to view entire albums as efforts. If only one part of the album is any good, then the album is a failure. Of course, part of this does come from the fact that a lot of the stuff I listen to (electronica, progressive rock) is put together as one long mix or atleast a lot of consideration is given to the album as whole, as opposed to the "grouping of single songs" model that seems present in other genres. As such, seperating out one track by inself makes it sound awkward. Of course, there are parts of the CD that are stronger and parts that are weaker, but to pick and choose here seems like just listening to that guitar riff you like out of a Nirvana song rather than the whole thing.
Another thing is, you must listen to the same few songs over and over a lot if you are so choosy. My "Best of the best" of my absolute favorites (songs that I like that do stand well on their own) is about 1.5 CD lengths long, and easily fits in my 512MB MP3 player. That's not a lot of music.
Of course, I do have single tracks, mostly things like TLC and Will Smith so I can get all nostaligic over my High School days when I listened to the radio, which pretty much agrees with the idea that if you only like one track from the CD, then it's crappy music.
People looking for indie and unusual stuff are more likely to go with eMusic...
"90% of tracks on any vinyl album were filler and B-sides that no-one ever wanted to listen to"
Dude are you serious? If you are listening to an album and 90% of the tracks suck what the hell albums are you listening to? Do you even own vinyl albums or cds? Go back to Massachusetts.
He is as reliable as the ocean is shallow, and as unbiased as a Steve Jobs fanboi.
Nothing to see here, move along.
DRM'd music is always a risky proposition, but to buy it from Microsoft (who have a history of screwing their partners, customers, and anyone else they feel they can make a quick buck from), using a deprecated system, is the worst choice. Personally, I wouldn't buy it from anyone.
Morgan Stanly appranently thinks exactly the opposite:
g uid=%7B0A04C303-6960-4ECC-9604-D63575E48ACC%7D
;-]
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?
Here's to the stock price recovering as a result
They also do not explain their methodology for selecting the panel of three thousand people or what demographics they represent.
Apple might not have discrete numbers for music sales separate from iPod accessories but take a look at their fourth quarter results for iPod related services and accessories: http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q406data_sum.pdf
There was a 1 percent drop from the previous quarter and a 71% increase year over year compared with the fourth quarter of 2005.
If you look at the numbers of Quarter 2 of 2006: http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q206data_sum.pdf
You see that there was a 1% drop from the previous quarter and a 125% growth year over year compared with Q2 in 2005.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Forrester Confirms: iTunes Sales NOT plummeting. It's just slowing growth.
Geez.
A different report claims the opposite:
"The Forrester report which claimed iTunes sales were dropping off has been disputed by a ComScore report that says the opposite."
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8099/52/
Why not help people download an application that automates the album art process? Or do you think command line interfaces are easy to learn and understand for the audience you are addressing? If your audience doesn't benefit from your knowledge you don't know how to reach them at their level.
I think there's more to the declining sale than just a release of iTunes 7.0.
Are iTunes sales collapsing? Yesterday Reuters reported they are, and quoted a Forrester Research. Forrester denied it ever said it, and blamed the media for inaccurately reporting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Though I'm not a business pro, I personally believed that every business has its ups and downs. It may be running smoothly today but you can't still deny the fact that it may slow down after a month or two. With this ever changing technology in the web, it is better that you are up to the challenges and competition. iTunes may have experience some collapsing on revenues today but it will surely gain more sooner with new and effective strategies just like how they stood up when Apple was down years ago.