Why Won't Apple Sell Your iTunes LPs?

jfruhlinger writes "Over the weekend there's been a bit of controversy over the fact that Apple has effectively shut indie artists out of the iTunes LP market by charging $10,000 in design fees. But the real question is why Apple is in charge of designing the new iTunes LP at all, since the format is based on open Web design technologies. There's at least one iTunes LP already available outside the iTunes store. Why won't Apple sell it?"

Comments

Re:XXS and other issues

[radtea]

And they just don't have the time to go over everyones code.

And don't have the competency to write some static screening tools that will reject all the XSS stuff etc?

And don't have the legal chops to write contractual language that will let them pwn your ass if you do submit LP's with XSS etc in them?

While putting a paywall up does have the advantage of creating a somewhat self-policing marketplace in this regard, my sense is that a $500 fee would do the same job and not exclude smaller players. It isn't the fact of the fee but its size that provides the evidence of Apple's malicious intent in preventing iTunes users from having access to LPs from smaller players.

Re:Can anyone think of a reason?

[drinkypoo]

This is basically what happened with the iPhone, at $600 they didn't sell as well as they could have and gave Apple time to make enhancements before dropping the price.

Some of us see the release of a smartphone without MMS and without the ability to take apps anywhere but the browser (which is what the iPhone was like when it was released) to be beta-quality at best. We're talking about a phone missing major functionality. Apple didn't hold that castrated phone back from the consumer though, so it's nothing like what happened with the iPhone. Instead, Apple released a phone which only early adopters and fanboys would buy, and they bought one. Then when Apple got their act together enough to add the rest of the needed functionality, they did so. It did not harm consumers in any way. Nor would changing the format for iTunes LPs; there is no reason they could not convert from an old format to a new format, and there's no particular reason the iTunes client couldn't support both formats.

So no, this is nothing like what happened with the iPhone, and this is an even more bullshit excuse than wanting to maintain high quality.