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iTunes Staffers Becomes Music's New Gatekeepers
WSJdpatton writes to mention The Wall Street Journal has a look at how Apple is shaking up the world of music retailing. "Apple -- now one of the largest sellers of music in the U.S. -- offers home-page placement in exchange for things such as exclusive access to new songs, special discount pricing or additional material such as interviews with stars. Most other big retailers, digital and physical, also seek exclusive offerings, but Apple is especially aggressive and has outsize clout when it comes to the slightly out-of-mainstream music it often emphasizes."
In the United States, it's not illegal to be a monopoly. But, once a monopoly, what was once a competitive advantage becomes criminal conduct.
As a business owner, I'll leverage every advantage I can to the detriment of my competitors, including (but not limited to) absorbing the losses in one marketplace in order to ensure the profits in another, and utilizing my commercial strength in an area to negotiate an advantageous relationship with other vendors.
But in the United States, once you've become a "monopoly", many things that were once expected become criminal actions.
Apple can (and should) leverage their dominance in the music distribution scene to their advantage. As a publicly traded company, it's their fiduciary responsibility to make as money as they can figure out how to do. But if the dominance of the Apple juggernaut continues for much longer, they'll be branded a "monopoly", and then things get pretty complicated pretty fast.
No, I don't think they are a monopoly. (I just bought a Creative Zen to replace my dead iPod, and I'm much happier with the result) But their dominance is... dominating.
Apple needs to tread a bit carefully, methinks.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's not like the majority of music purchases in the US or abroad is happening through iTunes or even users of iTunes. Do the editorial staff have an impact? Yes- within iTunes.
Look, if they had that much "power" over what act becomes the next big thing, they (along with the other music services) would be getting more love from the labels, but that's not the case.
Radio, videos, word of mouth- these are all still more powerful than the iTunes ed staff. I'm sure they'll love the ego boost, though.
R(k)
Hah! Replace "CDs" with "vinyl", and this is exactly what audiophiles were saying before CDs were around. Here's a hint. Audiophiles have absolutely no effect on what direction the consumer electronics and music industries take.
The proportion of people that can tell 128 kbit AAC from CD audio is pretty small. The subset of those who have the equipment and environment to discern that difference is smaller yet. The subset of those who give enough of a shit to change their buying patterns is really, really miniscule.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
What does the quality of music on iTMS have to do with ripping your own CDs?
PS There aren't enough people dropping 10k on speakers to stop iTMS selling low-quality music, it's probably 1% of the audiophile market, and 0.0001% of the music-buying market. You seem to equate iTMS with 'online music' here - there are plenty of online stores who offer better quality, some even offer FLAC and let you choose how much you pay. Quality is not really an issue now for most people, and long term it will be a simple matter to increase the quality (iTMS has already done it once for videos), probably to well beyond the quality you get from CDs.
Some day all media will be consumed and sold this way (including TV); let's just hope they drop trying to impose DRM along the way, as that's the only downside to digital distribution of media, and the only reason I don't use the iTMS yet.