Right... and I subscribe NetFlix and when I return the DVD I no longer have it. That doesn't mean that Netflix is worthless.
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all? For me, paying $10 per month for access to basically all the music I care about is a fantastic, unbelievable deal. I can still buy CDs or even buy tracks on iTunes if I want - but that doesn't negate the value of the subscription service.
RealPlayer sucks, Real sucks as a company, and their RealOne subscription service is worthless. However Real had nothing to do with the development of Rhapsody. They acquired Listen.com, which developed Rhapsody, earlier this year and (so far) Real hasn't changed anything. I started using Rhapsody back when Listen was an independent company.
From the press. I follow this stuff pretty closely.
The Rhapsody number is from Real Networks last earnings report - so in fact it's a couple of months old, and they've done a big ad push in the last couple of months, so they're probably well over 300K, maybe 350K (they picked up over 100K subscribers last quarter without a big ad push).
Jobs is so intent on trashing the subscription model that he resorts to lies:
One question to ask these subscription services is how many subscribers they have. Altogether, it's around 50,000. And that's not just for Rhapsody, it's for the old Pressplay and the old Musicmatch. The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful.
Actual current numbers for the sub services: Rhapsody (from Real Networks): 250,000 MusicNet: 175,000 Napster (formerly pressplay): 80,000 MusicMatch MX: 150,000
Total here is over 600,000. These services tend to run about $10 per month, yielding a total revenue of over $6 million per month across all services. iTunes has sold 20 million songs in 7 months, or less than $3 million in revenue. Profit margins on subscriptions are higher as well.
I use Rhapsody and it kicks iTunes ass - there's just no comparison, given my listening habits (I'm almost always online). Looks like there are plenty of people who agree with me.
While vacuuming you can't really do much else with the database.
Not true. Starting in 7.3, the default version of VACUUM no longer locks the table. From the 7.3 docs:
Plain VACUUM (without FULL) simply reclaims space and makes it available for re-use. This form of the command can operate in parallel with normal reading and writing of the table, as an exclusive lock is not obtained. VACUUM FULL does more extensive processing, including moving of tuples across blocks to try to compact the table to the minimum number of disk blocks. This form is much slower and requires an exclusive lock on each table while it is being processed.
Just a guess, but I believe there are still lawsuits pending against mp3.com from the my.mp3.com days. If CNet were to acquire the whole company, they would have taken on this liability.
Anyone know what they're using as the HTML rendering engine for the store? The Mac version uses KHTML (also used in Safari). Did they port it, or did they just use the IE control?
Paul Krugman (Princeton prof. & NY Times columnist) wrote a very relevant piece that helps explain why the RIAA hired a Republican lobbyist - keep in mind that the entertainment industry, and the music industry in particular, is traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Krugman writes that the Republicans are refusing to deal with Democratic lobbyists. This is a new development in Washington, and is seen as an attempt to solidify "one-party rule".
Krugman writes: "Lobbying jobs are a major source of patronage -- a reward for the loyal. More important, however, many lobbyists now owe their primary loyalty to the party, rather than to the industries they represent. So corporate cash, once split more or less evenly between the parties, increasingly flows in only one direction."
Not sure how this ended up with an "insightful" moderation:
1) It doesn't "take anything away". It's another option. That's like saying that the existence of NetFlix takes away your ability to buy music. The existing subscription services like Pressplay do include the ability to "buy" a song as well as "rent" via a tethered download. 2) Huh? "Freedom to time your purchases"? I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The sub model is all-you-can eat, download as much as you want whenever you want. Not sure how you could get much more freedom than that. 3) "Vote with your money" - again, huh? Are you saying that with a sub service there's no way to tell what's popular? Of course there is - the sub service can tell what's most downloaded.
But this is a bit different - you have to give back the DVD to the video store when you're done because it's a physical good. But you could keep the song file on your portable player forever (as long as you keep paying the sub fee). So renting is the same as owning in this case.
Besides which, no one said that the services won't allow for buying as well. Pressplay currently supports both tethered downloads and permanent downloads. The point of the article is that the distinction between the two will be diminished once portable players support tethered downloads.
It's a different way of thinking about music - you've paid to use the music for a specific length of time. You've received that. So how is your money "evaporating"? It's like saying that if you rent from a video store, and that video store goes under, the money you spent renting movies from them has now "evaporated".
OK, fair enough. But I look at my portable player as my music collection. I bring it everywhere, I use it in my car, etc. I'm very happy to have my music in one place and never to have to deal with CDs. So for people like me, renting is the same as buying.
OK, so maybe $5000 vs. $120 a year? $5000 would buy you over 40 years of a subscription, which also gives you the ability to swap in new music whenever you want.
The sub services currently don't allow you to transfer to a portable device without pay an additional $1 per track. That means that they are only valuable for listening to music on your PC. The point of the article is that once portable players support the new DRM, the value of the sub services should go up tremendously.
But why buy? if you're already planning to keep the subscription going, renting is the same as buying. Unless you just like the feeling of "owning" the bits.
Yes you would be, but you're only out the money for the months that you used the service (and had use of the music). Switch to another service and you're back in business.
The service already exists (Pressplay) and no one has done it yet. An old version of MS DRM was cracked, but the current version has been around for a couple of years and has not been compromised yet.
There are two different rights here - the publishing and the master recording. Michael Jackson owns the Beatles publishing rights, i.e. the rights to the music and lyrics, but not to the recordings of the songs. The publishing is not the issue with the Apple service, and in fact you can probably find covers of Beatles songs on it. The issue is the digital distribution rights to the master recording, which in most cases is owned by the labels but in some cases is owned by the artist. Besides the Beatles, other artists that own their digital rights include Dave Matthews, Phish, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, No Doubt, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Jobs is lobbying these artists personally and was able to get some Eagles and No Doubt tracks.
You're right, Napster didn't have ads. In fact they never made a dime until the very end, after they declard bankruptcy, when they sold some t-shirts. This was intentional - Napster didn't want to make money until their legal issues were resolved, because this would have given the labels more ammunition to go after them. By not making money they could claim that even if there was copyright infringement, they didn't benefit from it.
The article doesn't mention my favorite Line6 product, the GuitarPort. It's a little box that hooks up to the USB port of your computer on one end, and your guitar on the other. The box is a D/A converter for your guitar sound, which is then fed to your computer. You run GuitarPort software (Windows only) which does the amp modeling and effects on your machine.
You can use it in combination with a service (pay per month) that lets you download "tones" - amp and effect combinations that model the sounds on specific songs. So you just search for "Comfortably Numb" and you've got a pretty damned good version of the tone. It also comes with tab and backing tracks for a lot of tracks, plus other backing tracks for different chord progressions. Even without subscribing to the service you can rip your own CDs or use your own MP3s and play along to them, and even play them at half speed. Great stuff, and it sells for about $170.
As far as I can recall Michael Jackson owns the rights to the Beatles catalog.
He owns the publishing rights, but the Beatles own the master rights to their recordings. Jackson has already licensed the publishing rights and there are plenty of Beatles covers available on the various legal services.
Slashdot Mirror
-
Rhapsody: 250,000
-
MusicMatch: 150,000 (scroll down - it's in the body of the article)
-
MusicNet: 175,000
Can't find the Napster numbers, but I think the numbers above should convince you I know what I'm talking about.Right... and I subscribe NetFlix and when I return the DVD I no longer have it. That doesn't mean that Netflix is worthless.
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all? For me, paying $10 per month for access to basically all the music I care about is a fantastic, unbelievable deal. I can still buy CDs or even buy tracks on iTunes if I want - but that doesn't negate the value of the subscription service.
OK...
u 155_1.html
m l
2 38bHXYwEJ: www.grammy.com/news/newswatch/2003/1008.html+music net+%22175,000+subscribers%22&hl=en&ie=UTF -8
RealNetworks Announces 250,000 Subscribers to Its Digital Music Services:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031028/sft
This article gives the MusicMatch 150,000 number:
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5098494.ht
MusicNet numbers:
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:fU
Can't seem to find the Napster numbers, but I think the above should suffice.
Now, what were you saying about my credibility vs. Jobs?
RealPlayer sucks, Real sucks as a company, and their RealOne subscription service is worthless. However Real had nothing to do with the development of Rhapsody. They acquired Listen.com, which developed Rhapsody, earlier this year and (so far) Real hasn't changed anything. I started using Rhapsody back when Listen was an independent company.
From the press. I follow this stuff pretty closely.
The Rhapsody number is from Real Networks last earnings report - so in fact it's a couple of months old, and they've done a big ad push in the last couple of months, so they're probably well over 300K, maybe 350K (they picked up over 100K subscribers last quarter without a big ad push).
Actual current numbers for the sub services:
Rhapsody (from Real Networks): 250,000
MusicNet: 175,000
Napster (formerly pressplay): 80,000
MusicMatch MX: 150,000
Total here is over 600,000. These services tend to run about $10 per month, yielding a total revenue of over $6 million per month across all services. iTunes has sold 20 million songs in 7 months, or less than $3 million in revenue. Profit margins on subscriptions are higher as well.
I use Rhapsody and it kicks iTunes ass - there's just no comparison, given my listening habits (I'm almost always online). Looks like there are plenty of people who agree with me.
Not true. Starting in 7.3, the default version of VACUUM no longer locks the table. From the 7.3 docs:
Just a guess, but I believe there are still lawsuits pending against mp3.com from the my.mp3.com days. If CNet were to acquire the whole company, they would have taken on this liability.
"two StrataFlash memory chips for 256MB of memory"
OK, since KHTML is LGPL wouldn't that mean that they would need to publish the source?
Anyone know what they're using as the HTML rendering engine for the store? The Mac version uses KHTML (also used in Safari). Did they port it, or did they just use the IE control?
Krugman writes: "Lobbying jobs are a major source of patronage -- a reward for the loyal. More important, however, many lobbyists now owe their primary loyalty to the party, rather than to the industries they represent. So corporate cash, once split more or less evenly between the parties, increasingly flows in only one direction."
Not sure how this ended up with an "insightful" moderation:
1) It doesn't "take anything away". It's another option. That's like saying that the existence of NetFlix takes away your ability to buy music. The existing subscription services like Pressplay do include the ability to "buy" a song as well as "rent" via a tethered download.
2) Huh? "Freedom to time your purchases"? I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The sub model is all-you-can eat, download as much as you want whenever you want. Not sure how you could get much more freedom than that.
3) "Vote with your money" - again, huh? Are you saying that with a sub service there's no way to tell what's popular? Of course there is - the sub service can tell what's most downloaded.
But this is a bit different - you have to give back the DVD to the video store when you're done because it's a physical good. But you could keep the song file on your portable player forever (as long as you keep paying the sub fee). So renting is the same as owning in this case.
Besides which, no one said that the services won't allow for buying as well. Pressplay currently supports both tethered downloads and permanent downloads. The point of the article is that the distinction between the two will be diminished once portable players support tethered downloads.
It's a different way of thinking about music - you've paid to use the music for a specific length of time. You've received that. So how is your money "evaporating"? It's like saying that if you rent from a video store, and that video store goes under, the money you spent renting movies from them has now "evaporated".
OK, fair enough. But I look at my portable player as my music collection. I bring it everywhere, I use it in my car, etc. I'm very happy to have my music in one place and never to have to deal with CDs. So for people like me, renting is the same as buying.
OK, so maybe $5000 vs. $120 a year? $5000 would buy you over 40 years of a subscription, which also gives you the ability to swap in new music whenever you want.
The sub services currently don't allow you to transfer to a portable device without pay an additional $1 per track. That means that they are only valuable for listening to music on your PC. The point of the article is that once portable players support the new DRM, the value of the sub services should go up tremendously.
But why buy? if you're already planning to keep the subscription going, renting is the same as buying. Unless you just like the feeling of "owning" the bits.
Yes you would be, but you're only out the money for the months that you used the service (and had use of the music). Switch to another service and you're back in business.
The service already exists (Pressplay) and no one has done it yet. An old version of MS DRM was cracked, but the current version has been around for a couple of years and has not been compromised yet.
There are two different rights here - the publishing and the master recording. Michael Jackson owns the Beatles publishing rights, i.e. the rights to the music and lyrics, but not to the recordings of the songs. The publishing is not the issue with the Apple service, and in fact you can probably find covers of Beatles songs on it. The issue is the digital distribution rights to the master recording, which in most cases is owned by the labels but in some cases is owned by the artist. Besides the Beatles, other artists that own their digital rights include Dave Matthews, Phish, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, No Doubt, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Jobs is lobbying these artists personally and was able to get some Eagles and No Doubt tracks.
By the way, the recent book All The Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster is great and explains the Napster suit very well.
You can use it in combination with a service (pay per month) that lets you download "tones" - amp and effect combinations that model the sounds on specific songs. So you just search for "Comfortably Numb" and you've got a pretty damned good version of the tone. It also comes with tab and backing tracks for a lot of tracks, plus other backing tracks for different chord progressions. Even without subscribing to the service you can rip your own CDs or use your own MP3s and play along to them, and even play them at half speed. Great stuff, and it sells for about $170.
For more details see this review
He owns the publishing rights, but the Beatles own the master rights to their recordings. Jackson has already licensed the publishing rights and there are plenty of Beatles covers available on the various legal services.