Slashdot Mirror
Looming Royalty Decision Threatens iTunes Store, Apple Hints
eldavojohn writes "You may recall us discussing some legislation about online music. More decisions are being made that may affect how much money Apple must impart to labels and musicians. Right now, it's 9 cents a track — which adds up, when you sell 2.4 billion tracks each year. The Copyright Royalty Board is asking for 15 cents a track (66% increase) and Apple isn't going to agree."
Reader scorp1us points out a similar article at CNN; both stories mention that Apple has intimated such a change might cause a complete shutdown of the iTunes Music Store.
Update: 10/02 21:03 GMT by T : According to CNet, the rate has been officially frozen at 9.1 cents per track.
Apple has intimated such a change might cause a complete shutdown of the iTunes Music Store.
More importantly, what of the client software that interacts with the store? You know, the program that allows you to burn/listen/store "your" music?
As the user who submitted this article, I would like to point out that they removed my DRM fear mongering from my original submission. As a geek it's my duty to squeal like a stuck pig when troubles a brewin' and I think there's a rude awakening looming for a whole ton of iTunes users.
Essentially, I'm guessing the RIAA will pressure Apple into releasing or updating their client software to not decrypt the DRM'd songs (non iTunes Plus tracks) until the user coughs up the additional six cents. Hell, I have no way of knowing that this isn't already implemented in iTunes and Apple need only stop delivering the other half of keys to the clients to decrypt a user's data.
And that's why DRM has failed, continues to fail and will always fail. Nobody read the EULA/TOS of iTunes and nobody understands that when you're "buying" the song for a dollar, you're not buying anything but the right to listen to that song for some undetermined amount of time. Here's a simple case: What happens to "your songs" when you die?
Burn them to discs or convert them to an open format anyway you know possible, folks. That's the only advice I have--especially with this on the horizon. Buy Apple players, Amazon MP3s and look no further than the GPL for your software.
My work here is dung.
Yeah, right.
Call their bluff, require 15 cents.
iTunes Music Store isn't going anywhere.
If anything, prices will go up a dime. (Yes, for a 6 cent increase.)
Hmm good point. My band's music is on iTunes, as well as that of tons of other bands I know, who are completely independent. We got our stuff onto iTunes through TuneCore who charge a pretty nominal yearly fee. No record label involved. They also don't take any cut of royalties sent from Apple. So, if any of that $0.99 is going to anyone other than either Apple or my band, somethin is screwed up there :P
Yeah. There's this organisation in my country that goes around collecting money from restaurants etc.
http://www.ppm.org.my/v2/downloads/quoteEN.jpg
I wonder what happens if a restaurant only plays music that I compose (I'm not a member and the last I checked I am not getting any money or royalties from them).
I also wonder where the royalties are really going and what the pie slices look like ;).
I buy things from iTunes knowing the risks of DRM specifically because it pisses off the RIAA and MPAA that they have to deal with Apple.
It amuses me NBC caved and put their TV back on iTunes because they lost so much revenue.
Am I wasting my money? Yeah probably. But lots of people also pay $10 to go to a movie for an hour and a half. I pay $2 an hour so seems like a half price entertainment deal, and I get to re-watch mine until something happens.