Apple Negotiates For Unlimited iTunes Downloads

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Bloomberg reports that Apple is in talks with record companies including Vivendi SA (VIV)'s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd. to give iTunes music buyers easier access to their songs on multiple devices. The deal would provide iTunes customers with a permanent backup of music purchases if the originals are damaged or lost and would allow downloads to iPad, iPod and iPhone devices linked to the same iTunes account. The negotiations come as iTunes is facing competition from new Web-based services such as Spotify Ltd., Rdio Inc. and MOG Inc. that focus on letting customers listen to songs from anywhere with an online connection, instead of downloading tracks to a hard drive. 'Long-time iTunes users know that one of the more obnoxious differences between music and app downloads on the iTunes Store is the fact that apps can be re-downloaded a seemingly infinite number of times,' writes Jacqui Cheng. 'In contrast, users can only download music tracks once — if you find yourself without backups and your music disappears, you must beseech the iTunes gods to let you re-download all your music—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, should they hear your prayers.""

Comments

Re:But what if...

[autojive]

Well, since the music you download from Apple is DRM free, I would say yes.

Better service..

[cortesoft]

You know who lets you download your songs as many times as you want?

The Pirate Bay

Re:Better service..

[Kjella]

Because Apple's store is way too dominant for their liking and they'd rather have a bunch of stragglers fighting to sell their music at the lowest possible markup? The record companies wanted to raise prices, particularly on the one or two hits that'd otherwise sell an album but Apple refused. The only reason Amazon got to open an MP3 shop was because Apple was bullying them around.

For them it's not getting better, it's getting worse. On the iPod, Apple needed the big labels. Now many people will get an iPhone or iPad for the apps, selling music is secondary. That and digital sales have increased massively, they can't afford not to be on iTunes anymore. They don't like that Apple is becoming the gatekeeper and is fighting it, but I don't think they'll win this one.

This is a pretty good graph on where we're heading, the CD is dying and digital is taking over. The iTunes Store is looking to be the Wal-Mart of digital downloads and the big 5 the manufacturers being squeezed to the lowest possible margins. That's not a future they saw coming and are trying desperately to back out of.

Re:Better service..

[mjwx]

The record companies wanted to raise prices

This is how I see it. Just like with the codec changes a few years ago that heralded a 30% price increase, the record labels want to raise the price yet again but Apple want to make it look like they're resisting.

Recording industry: We would like to raise prices for digital downloads.
Apple: Absolutely, we agree, after all we're getting a percentage.
Recording industry: Excellent, lets say another 30% added onto the RRP.
Apple: We have one minor provision though.
Recording industry: Provision?
Apple: Well, the plebs trust us, we've got an image to maintain and raising prices like this would be seen as being "evil" and "uncool" so we want to give a token gesture that would allow us to disguise this as something for their own good.
Recording industry: Pah, we care nothing for the sheep. What do you have in mind.
Apple: Something trivial, something they already have access to, say the ability to redownload songs they've already paid for.
Recording industry: Well I suppose so, we've already planned for the recordings we are releasing tomorrow to be outdated by next week, we'll be releasing the same recording with a new drum beat over the top. The sheep who does not have it will be the laughing stock of its herd.
Apple: Excellent.

Licensed content

[Xian97]

Since you only have a license for the content, then there is no reason why you should not be able to re-download it again. That license that you bought and paid for should not disappear just because you didn't perform a back up. If you have a physical copy such as a CD then there should be a replacement cost, but you can also sell and give away that CD, unlike a digital purchase which is tied to the account.

Re:Licensed content

[trawg]

There's no real COPYRIGHT LAW reason why you shouldn't be able to - but the cost of doing another download has other costs that need to be accounted for (the cost of the bandwidth, the cost of making a new connection to the download servers, etc, etc). It's easy to assume that cost is zero, but I can imagine it being something that people take seriously when it comes to capacity planning.

And before any gamers chime in and say "well, that's bullshit, because Steam lets you download things as many times as you want" - a significant proportion of the Steam Content Server Network is paid for by companies (ISPs) that are not Valve that maintain local mirrors (I manage two in Australia; we have several others because the cost of bandwidth is relatively high, and so there are several ISPs that are voluntarily running them for Valve as a benefit for their customers and to help reduce their bandwidth costs - so Valve get all that bandwidth for free).

Re:What?! You can't redownload ITunes songs!?

[DrgnDancer]

I don't see what's "bad" about this. It's inconvenient, I'll grant you, it would be nice if the iTunes store acted as a backup for all my purchased music, but the idea makes sense when you consider the former paradigm. If you bought a CD in the past and lost, broke or damaged it, you went and bought a new CD. Was one of the ways the music companies kept making money on old stuff. This simply extended that concept to non-physical music purchases. If you "lose" them, you have to rebuy them. Since Apple's music has been DRM free for years and it's extremely trivial to backup the music, the risk of loss actually seems much lower to me that the risk of loss for a physical CD.

I'll be happy if they change this, it will be nice to know that I have yet another layer of backup in addition to the copies on my phone, computer, laptop, and backup disk, but realistically I'm not exactly worried as things are. Anything that wipes out every copy I have of most of my music has probably destroyed a lot more valuable things as well (not to mention the music I still do have on CD).

My experience with Apple...

[CFTM]

My experience represents just one customer but I have never had an issue getting Apple to reissue downloads to me after losing all my data. They happily obliged after a hard drive failure and after my computer was stolen. Shame on me for not having backups, but Apple has always been very accommodating.

Re:But what if...

[EdZ]

I've regularly found tracks on the Japan ITMS that are only available in DRM form.