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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?"
I don't use iTunes so I must be missing something. Do they sell Long Play records on iTunes or does LP stand for something else?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The answer is simple. The labels have made quiet little threats to pull hot product if Apple doesn't charge $10,000.
It is quite likely that if they let people design their own LP's then Apple has to vet them for programming issues like cross site scripting especially if it allows HTML, Javascript or other languages to be active within them. And they just don't have the time to go over everyones code.
In which case, they need to come up with a standardized couple of formats in which people can plug in artwork, videos and other data to create their own LP.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Because Apple is a big corporation primarly interested in making money. Getting $10000 in design fees is a handy way of making $10000 more then if they just let you put it up for free.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I can.
What if this is to prevent labels from dumping crud into the iTunes store and making iTunes LP look like a joke? By forcing the studios to commit at least so much money to the project, they may only do it for bigger bands and when they can do a good job, instead of just putting 20 images together and just saying "Look! It's an LP" for everything in their catalog.
Basically, this may be a way to help with initial quality control.
The question is if it continues or not. Whether it's adjusted up or down, how it starts to work with indie labels, that will be the question.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Extractor? On a mac, you just have to rightclick on the LP file and do a "show package contents." It's just a bundle that uses HTML5/CSS3.
Doesn't take a lot of work.
Shinma
I believe that Apple wants to control -- to "curate" -- the new experience of the LP while it is in its nascent stage of marketing. They want to sell these things, they want to convince people they are worth buying, and to accomplish that they cannot let the floodgates open for every garage band to participate before some kind of clear quality benchmarks are established.
Let's face it: There is a lot of great Open Source software. Open Source design? Not so much...
So that Slashdot will have something about it to write, to generate buzz about this new "iTunes LP" thing no one has ever heard about.
Football Odds
I disagree that albums are unhip or dead or anything like that. Anyone who is serious about their music knows that a complete LP should be, and often is, a single work of art. Many artists put a lot of effort into selecting and arranging songs on an album such that it reads like a single story. Albums may be dead among the teeny-boppers, but anyone over the age of 18 who loves music should appreciate the importance of albums. I agree with "who cares" though. I wish people would go down to their local CD shop and buy a record and support a small business instead of feeding some giant middle man like apple. Then you can read the lyrics, see the art, put the songs on your HDD, lend it to your family and do whatever you want with it. I hope albums and CD stores stay alive.
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038901&c=1
so in the end we are right back at apple wanting to deliver that special fairy dust experience that only "they" can deliver...
talk about marketing machine...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
What if this is to prevent labels from dumping crud into the iTunes store
Have you heard the pop charts recently ?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
No negative moderation needed really, just the link to the story where Apple denies it is charging this 10k fee.
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038901&c=1
I actually think a fee of some sort here would be advisable for the "LP" so that there was at least some barrier to entry so that you couldn't just add a couple of photos and call it an LP and charge £25 for it. If there's a small barrier to entry (10k is not small really) then it would prevent (hopefully) dilution of the "LP" section with copies of Britney's latest musical abortion with a couple of shots of her in rehab rebranded as a "special edition".
According to the story linked there though, there is no $10k design fee.
As one of you old farts myself let me just say: the more things change the more thing stay the same. Music is still good and people are about as smart as they've ever been and many new albums are good start to finish, but people are exposed to MUCH more music then they have ever been before and digital distribution has absolutely de-emphasized the importance of the concept of album and either of these things might have something to do with the finicky, song-based approach many listeners take today.
Quack, quack.
Responding to criticism that the iTunes LP format has been priced out of reach for independent musicians and labels, Apple has said it plans to open the format in the near future.
Essentially they will allow anyone to design their own LP and bypass the $10,000 production fee.
Guess I could've stopped after typing the subject... but anyway. I'm old enough where I still have LPs in a box somewhere. Thinking back to how often I looked at the liner notes, extras, etc. - the total for a given album varies between zero and one. I just wanted the music back then, and that's the case now.
I do find it funny (but not surprising; I've been on Slashdot too long to have high expectations) that people here are reacting with outrage, even though the story's been shown to be bogus - Apple says they're not charging a fee for this. Being the control freaks they usually are, they're working on opening it to everyone rather than just letting it out there: "We're releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own. There is no production fee charged by Apple."
#DeleteChrome
iTunes store already has "complete my Album" which lets you buy the rest of the album, getting credit for the tracks you've already bought.
In most cases, albums are generally cheaper than buying all the tracks individually. Based on my experience, it seems to be the case for about 80% of the albums I've looked at (YMMV). And the new LPs even more so (more like 95%).
As someone else pointed out, the LP appears not to add additional cost to the album to the consumer, so it is throwing in extra goodies to encourage you to go for the album.
I doubt physical CDs will ever be part of the equation because you can already just burn your own for $.15/CD.