Apple to Start Record Label with Jay-Z and Beyonce?

[Project]

yes, but carrots are NOT degrading to our culture. Rap and hip hop has made people respect gang members. Do you want someone that is proud of murdering and raping people to be your idol? I don't! Rck sure had it's downfalls like drugs, but at the time there was little info about how bad drugs were for you.

Additionally the song Down by The River by Neil Young has a lyric in it that is "Down by the river, I shot my baby." This is sung with grief not with pride like it is in rap.

I suggest that you stop posting in this thread because you are embarrassing yourself through your complete lack of knowledge of Hiphop and somewhat stereotypical and illfounded views.


Ozzie Osbourne bit the head of a dove.
One of the members of Mayhem stabbed a bandmate to death 23 times.
Bard Faust of the band Emperor stabbed a homosexual to death, just for being a homosexual.
The punk artist GG Allin would roll around in faeces and urinate on people on stage.
The Mentors pioneered rape rock.
Gary Glitter is a pedophile.
There are tons of Nationalist/racist/KKK rock groups

But you wont find me labelling the entire genre of rock. Clearly these are a deranged minority who use the music as an expression of their hate. The same thing happens in Hiphop too. Yes, drug dealers become rappers as a legit way to make money. Yes, gangstas become rappers as a legit way to make money. But dont be so ridiculous as to slant an entire genre that has done so much good for black and hispanic people the world over, just because of the popular stuff you see on the TV (being pushed by white people and purchased by white people I might add). Remember the million man march? Native Tongue artists proudly wearing their black Africa medallions? The uniting of minorities previously at war in the South Bronx, where instead of battling with guns they battled with a lino mat and their forehead when breakdancing? The likes of Paris a and Immortal Technique damning the current administration before it was cool to do so?

Im not going to lie and sit here saying Hiphop is gospel music. Mostly, it isnt. But to judge an entire genre where you can find everything from christian rap to geek rap, emo rap to backpacker rap and everything in between, is insulting and childish. I mean, we have porn, films glorifying violence, hate and racism by the truckload, but you cant diminish the artform of film. You look at the individuals using that art as a vehicle for their work.

Anyway, I am way off topic so I apologise. I wont be responding to this issue anymore. Lets keep on topic.

[Porchland]

It'd be a bit weird not to be able to buy their artists music in stores, but if they could reduce costs significantly (to say - $0.50 a song), I'd be interested. And if they can do that and still pay the artists what they are worth - there would be a signup list of new artists miles long.


There's no reason to assume an Apple label wouldn't license out CD rights. For that matter, Apple would have every incentive to license recordings for CDs, film, TV shows, advertisements, compilations, etc., to give the artists exposure and more revenue streams.

[thomasfxlt]

As I've thought more about this, my guess is that these artist's are creating their own label and doing an exclusive distribution deal with Apple. This stuff gets all garbled up in the rumor mill. The dinosaur is getting cut out for a newer streamlined model. More money into the artists pocket and less into the hands of the traditional label. Apple wins because they don't make any less and they don't fight with label executives. The artists win because they cut out the middle man. With the exponential increase in digital sales over sites like iTunes and the use of the internet for promotion, who needs companies like Universal. I'm sure there is money to be saved by "thinking different" about the recording industry.

[dernhelm]

I don't think Apple would do this. I don't think they would want to have any hip-hop image attached to their brand permanently. I'd think they may do it if the label starts off with a broad range of artists, not just Jay-Z and Beyonce. People in other genres.

I doubt Apple would be stupid enough to tie themselves to a single genre of music. They have more than enough clout to bring in artists from all genres. They may start with bug name artists from one genre, but that wouldn't be where they stop.

Unfortunately, I don't actually believe any of this rumor. I'm guessing it is just wishful thinking by some disheartened people in the industry.

[liv4Mac]

Personally, I don’t like this move but, it is probably a good move for Apple.

Apple has been in the music business for a while with iTunes so, they know exactly what kind of music or genre has the highest demand.

I don’t think hip-hop is degrading but I do know that the MP3 sound quality is degrading.

BTW, Most of the negative post I’ve read here shows that the poster does not know anything about business and the Music Industry. Out of all genres, this is the one that apple would benefit from. If you don’t think so then tell me which genre would generate the most $$$$. I only have a problem with the sound quality of MP3.

[Draelius]

...the "vinyl revival" as described in today's Guardian, provides an interesting twist on things.

Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2127345,00.html)

[kilimanjaro]

I only have one thing to say, as I am at work and don't have much time to post a longer reply.

I am shocked at the 'open minded' Mac community.. Such racist overtones by some members.. I bet someall have been to Vegas and gambled in hotels that were built by blood and guns.:rolleyes:

I some have watched Scarface and love Raging Bull.. Big fans of John Wayne and :rolleyes:
:rolleyes:
Good number probably Tarantino fans - all fans of Pulp Fiction..

But when some young black men say a few things.. nothing not in these movies.. they are bad and must be shunned.. "people like them", "should be banned"..:eek:

Get over it.. Deal with who you are and go watch some more Michael Richards.. Enjoy..;)

Jay Z and Beyonce are doing much better off than you..

Cheers. Now back to work.:)


Jaro.

[csimmons]

Wow. Some truly ignorant people here. Truly.

Anyway, I doubt that Apple will start a label. I think what's really going to happen is that Jay-Z (who's not only Beyonce's boyfriend, but her manager as well, which is why she's probably even a part of the rumor) might have approached Apple to be the sole digital distributor for Def Jam's catalog, which may have pissed Universal off, hence the announcement regarding the new iTunes deal. Most of the current artists associated with Def Jam are Roc-a-fella artists anyway (Jay-Z's record label for the Hip-Hop challenged ;-)), so it wouldn't be so difficult to get some of those artists to jump ship.

By the way: People have been calling Hip-Hop a "passing fad" for going on 20 years now. Hip-Hop and R&B artists have dominated the charts for the last 10 years or longer. The influence of Hip-Hop on Rock, Pop, Jazz and even Metal, is undeniable. If you don't like Hip-Hop or R&B, that's fine, but there's no denying the power that Hip-Hop entrepeneurs like Jay-Z wield in the music industry. The fact is, Hip-Hop is, and has been for a long time, the new Rock, as far as musical and cultural phenomena go. You can either roll with it, or get out of the way. To say "if this rumor is true, I will have lost all respect for Apple" or other such nonsense is not only silly and plain ignorant, but fails to recognize the significance of the situation.

[Alpinism]

yay more delay to Leopard coz the engineers gotta go to the studio to think of new "next big thing" hooks.

good job apple, now we will probably not see new Mac Pro update which is only the main product that your majority REAL core customers uses (Final cut studio, cS3 photoshop).

But hey, those 12, 13 yr old gotta look cool and flashy with your gadgets, i guess thats more important now for "Apple Inc".

[Porchland]

Apple Inc. becoming a record company would be like General Electric dropping electric locomotives and going back to making steam engines.

Not gonna happen people...

Actually, Apple becoming a record company would be more like General Electric buying up expensive patents that it need to make its trains more cost-effectively.

Whether it's a good idea is a complicated question, but Apple starting a label would be classic vertical integration. It wouldn't be much different than cable carriers owning cable channels (which they do) or the TV networks owning the TV production units (which they do).

Your analogy implies that music is some sort of anachronism; it's current label model, not the music, that's the anachronism.

[doemel]

...the "vinyl revival" as described in today's Guardian, provides an interesting twist on things.

Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2127345,00.html)

Sure does. Nevertheless I would say that most vinyl buyers are not your average mass market music consumer. That means vinyl will always remain a niche market and will never again rise to its former glory.

Another interesting twist of this is though that there's a lot of music that has NEVER been released on CD or digitally. A lot of that stuff will probably never be rereleased which in some cases is a real shame. That's where the collector's market kicks in and insane prices are paid on eBay (USD 500+ for a 12 inch from the 1980s is not uncommon). So far this phenomenon has mainly sparked the interest of small rerelease or bootleg labels. Since a lot of that music was released on small labels back then (one single 12 inch making up the entire label catalog is also not uncommon) the majors are not interested in/aware of this.

But I'm going OT...

[whatever]

Thought this rumor would have fizzled out after just one page.

Apple will not be launching a music label soon.

The music industry as a whole is just bad business these days and for Apple to launch their own label in stir the pot up would cause the major the labels to think twice about Apple as a music distributor.

If Apple were interested in doing such a thing, Steve Jobs would have moved Heaven and Earth to sign on of his favorite performers, Paul McCartney, who just signed with startup label from Starbucks.

Why isn't anyone reporting on the rumors that the iPhones will be able to cross over to other iPhone networks (AT&T and O2 for example) for no charge and no service interruption?

[john7jr]

this appears to be a parody of my post so I'll respond.

Actually it wasn't. No singular post made me reply in the manner that I did. But I'm glad you posted a well-constructive reply nonetheless.

=)

[kingtj]

You don't see why they would? I can completely see it. Look at it this way. Apple has an absolutely HUGE investment on the music side of the business already. People buy their iPods, use iTunes, and buy music from the iTunes store, all because of the music *content* they want to listen to. So far, that content is still controlled by a rather backwards, slow-moving recording industry that Apple has little control over.

Essentially, it was like pulling teeth to even get the recording industry on-board with their digital distribution model - and Apple had to make all sorts of concessions they disliked, just to make it happen. (DRM, limits on how many times a given playlist is allowed to be burnt to CDR in iTunes, no streaming your own media over an Internet connection, etc. etc.)

Despite Apple dragging the record labels into the modern digital era, mostly kicking and screaming, the labels STILL aren't even really thankful for any of the extra profit and "vision of the future" they've been shown. Instead, they bicker over wanting to sell iTunes tracks for more than 99 cents each, largely refuse to let go of consumer-unfriendly DRM, and so on. Some have even tried building their own competing online music stores for Windows PCs, hoping to steal Apple's concept out from underneath them while still letting them help sell their tracks.

Whether or not you think anything of Jay-Z and his lifestyle, music, etc. - he's still a C.E.O. of a recording label, and carries some influence. If he's the first one willing to work some kind of deal with Apple to give them "pull" in the other half of the "music business" (the recording/production side), then I'm sure Steve Jobs isn't going to skip the business opportunity just because he thinks the guy's hip-hop or lavish lifestyle isn't "his thing".


I don't see why Apple would even want to think about having their own music label. And even if they want in on the action, doing so with Jay-Z -- a guy that gloats about his expensive lifestyle -- won't do much to change the image of the big labels as soulless corporate entities that exploit and steal from artists.

If Apple goes through with this, they're going to start looking a lot like Sony.

[Kilamite]

I think this is good for Apple to get their name even more branded - and it isn't as if they don't have the software or computers to create music as part of their label either.

Most major recording studio's use Apple equipment and OS.

...the "vinyl revival" as described in today's Guardian, provides an interesting twist on things.

Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2127345,00.html)

Depends on the genre.

I still buy a lot of Vinyl music - mainly because I like to do mixing on decks. Genre's include Drum n Bass, Electro, Hip/Hop, Breakbeat, Reggae etc.

Vinyl is also a lot warmer and nicer to listen to than digital music - since digital music is not a complete smooth sine wave where as vinyl's oscillations are.

[nimbuscloud]

I can't believe "Mac people" here are so behind. They should shelter themselves in their Jettas in fear "of the black man".

You fear mongers are pathetic. You should really just stop posting...and breathing if that helps.

Simply pathetic and sad of the racist people here. :(:mad:

:apple:

[diamond.g]

But dont be so ridiculous as to slant an entire genre that has done so much good for black and hispanic people the world over, just because of the popular stuff you see on the TV (being pushed by white people and purchased by white people I might add).

See there is the rub, the stuff that is being played is being spoonfed to us by a bunch of corporate suits (unfortunately usually Caucasian men). It is being listened to by mostly Caucasian folks. Statistically speaking for the stuff to be as popular as it is there has to be a really large amount of Caucasian support.

While most of the main stream stuff is about how many girls, money, car, clothes, the rapper has there are some that are more thought provoking. Sadly that isn't what is seen. The image of rap still is one that was more or less created by NWA (gangster rap). Which is sad.

If this rumor was true, then it would only mean that Apple is going after probably the most profitable demographic currently available. I am sure it would be followed up with some other artists and genre's.

[peharri]

So far, that content is still controlled by a rather backwards, slow-moving recording industry that Apple has little control over.

Essentially, it was like pulling teeth to even get the recording industry on-board with their digital distribution model - and Apple had to make all sorts of concessions they disliked, just to make it happen. (DRM, limits on how many times a given playlist is allowed to be burnt to CDR in iTunes, no streaming your own media over an Internet connection, etc. etc.)


I understand where you're coming from, but those with (very) long memories know what happened when Sony bought its way into the content industry.

Like Apple, Sony had invested a small fortune in trying to persuade the studios to embrace new technologies that, realistically, could only help those studios. In one famous case, the Betamax ruling, Sony had even had to go to court to ensure the legality of something it was doing that didn't do any harm.

What actually happened after the take-over was that the technology side of Sony ended up being hampered by the actions of the content side. The content side never changed, it continued with the same paranoid attitudes towards control over content distribution that had caused Sony so much grief to begin with. Instead of Sony becoming the liberator fighting for fair use, it saw it in its own commercial best interests to ensure its technologies were strictly limited.

Apple taking on a chunk of the music industry and becoming obligated to make that division profitable does not bode well for the existing technology-based Apple.

[guzhogi]

I don't really care about this. If Apple wants to start a hip-hop/rap record label, good for them. Who knows, different genres might join. But I can see why a lot of people can see this as a bad thing. I know hip-hop and rap is stereotyped (often incorrectly) as gang/violence music. I don't like rap, but because I don't like the sound of it. I could care less about the content.

[kymac]

Do you want someone that is proud of murdering and raping people to be your idol?

please search your heart out for a song with these motifs. esp. a jay z or beyonce one. then get back to me.

[nimbuscloud]

I don't really care about this. If Apple wants to start a hip-hop/rap record label, good for them. Who knows, different genres might join. But I can see why a lot of people can see this as a bad thing. I know hip-hop and rap is stereotyped (often incorrectly) as gang/violence music. I don't like rap, but because I don't like the sound of it. I could care less about the content.

For the last fricken time, it isn't about them starting a damn hip hop label. IT'S A MUSIC LABEL! They seem to be starting with a few people first. Get your head out of the ground and try to THINK DIFFERENT or go play with Vista.

:apple:

[cliffjumper68]

I doubt Apple would be stupid enough to tie themselves to a single genre of music. They have more than enough clout to bring in artists from all genres. They may start with bug name artists from one genre, but that wouldn't be where they stop.

Unfortunately, I don't actually believe any of this rumor. I'm guessing it is just wishful thinking by some disheartened people in the industry.

This rumor makes great sense when you consider the real world vision of Steve Jobs. He focuses on the experience, the service offering. Look at what they have already done for indy bands through the free single of the week. This is a natural extension of that philosophy. I hope we finally get a label that is genuinely concerned for the artist/ fan rather than interrogating 12 year old little girls and suing 89 year old grandmothers. Go Steve!

[cliffjumper68]

please search your heart out for a song with these motifs. esp. a jay z or beyonce one. then get back to me.

The Label is still a rumor at this point so I wouldn't narrow its offerings to two popular artists (who I personally do not care for). Look at all of the genres featured on the free single of the week. I would think that would be more indicative of a possible internal label. They have had everything from blue grass to rap to world folk, so a label run by the same type (if not the same) people would have a broad offering. There is also the whole concept of itunes, which promotes a vast diversity of music in clean easily obtainable form. In order to believe that any internal label would be only rap and hip hop, you would have to dismiss all that we have seen and come to love in apple.

[gifford]

I think this is a great idea except...

They are gonna annoy all the other record labels, which they really shouldn't do.

[cliffjumper68]

I think this is a great idea except...

They are gonna annoy all the other record labels, which they really shouldn't do.

I wonder if this has something to do with Universals actions to not renew there existing contract with apple? Jay-Z does run one of their sub-Labels.

[boss1]

1st
...Rolling Stone magazine in the 12/8/03 issue. The following is from the very end of the interview:..........
SJ: The remedy is to stop paying advances. .......


Wrong. I respect Steve Job's for what he does and hopefully he's learned a lot about the real working music industry since he was quoted in the statement above in 2003.

You can't just knock a system out of place until you understand the reasons why it's there in the first place and find a remedy to fill the void. The reason artist's get large advances is so they can spend money on creating demand. Promotion, touring, Radio, Press etc. Music industry services on a national scale done properly come with a price. Not just talking about the people on the receiving end here either. Don't think the greedy radio station walks away with all the money here folks. Every successful artist has a competent team of people who need to eat. Competence comes with a price.

Promotion is done and demand is created before the sale not after, and it costs money.

2nd
Many here are addressing the outcome of the story. If it's true than this or that. If it's not true etc. It hasn't happened yet and it might not. Stop and think about what parties are gaining from the story itself. And of course it's wise, smart people don't come to the negotiating table when it comes time to renew a contract empty handed.

3rd
I won't say anything regarding the complications or conflicts that would arise if this rumor was true other than there are literally hundreds of complications and hundreds of different conflicts of interest. Listing all of them and evaluating them would require a 500+ page book.

Theoretically it could happen however, all it would do is shift control from 4 major companies to 100 or so individuals, or a very few new majors (apple being one of them). I'm not going write a novel here but I will say that if you understood what I see, I work in this industry for a living, you might not be so pleased with the aftermath.

[MacPen]

Beyonce and Apple. This better be true. :D:D:D She can be the new face of Apple.

Yeah, then I'd throw up all over it. Beyonce the face of Apple... :BARF!!!!:

[diamond.g]

Beyonce and Apple. This better be true. :D:D:D She can be the new face of Apple.

*ahem* you mean legs of Apple :D

[EagerDragon]

Assuming that Apple Inc. goes this way, it would be a positive for the artists as they will not get rip-off. Apple would likely offer their music with and without DRM (.30 more). A lot of labels would cry wolf as they lose more and more artists to Apple. It would be very interesting!!!!!!!!!!!

It is just a matter of Apple wanting to go there. There is a good likelyhood that even if this rumor is false, that they at least have considered it.

Tours and other physical promotions would still occur, but they may branch out the label as a separate company wholy owned by Apple Inc and heavily promoted in iTunes.

[gwangung]

...to say anything.

Devil is in the details, you know. What is Apple's responsibilites? If it's just financial and online stuff, then why are people complaining? If it's more, it depends on exactly who has to do what.

[RichardI]

Who the h@#$ cares?

[bbyrdhouse]

If this was a death metal band you guys would be okay but since it is rap all of you white raciest has a problem. Why don't people get over rap is here to stay and that will never change. I didn't think many kkk members bought Macs or were on this web page. This proves that 93% of whites are raciest that is a fact.

And the other 7% that you obviously fall into are jack asses

[boss1]

Who the h@#$ cares?

everyone who posted a reply. and more

[jabu31]

Mmmmm this has got to be the worst mistake that could be made by apple. Ok put aside the possible business savvy that both these performers might have (seriously tries not cry from laughter). I am sure their are great at managing a record label etc. But seriously can we be looking forward to itunes being renamed the "IZZO HOUSE" with a large portion of music offered being rap. :confused:

I mean don't get me wrong i am sure that genre of music has some redeeming qualities . But its hard to justify with such emphasis on the B**** and H***. Not to forget the glorified emphasis on "BIG PIMPIN". I can see it now the itunes store turned into a "ghetto paradise" with black women objectified as sex objects. With the women wearing small pink thongs bending over and shaking that "ba donk a donk"!?!?!?! As black and white men throw bills into the girls crack.:eek::eek::eek:

I am sure the slogan of this rumored record label could be "Apples and hoes" or maybe "Apple bottoms" not only is it a brand but its something to tap at too"!!!!!! :eek::eek::eek:

Seriously I would be disgusted if this were true.:confused::(

I mean this is a pretty interesting idea.But i think its the wrong people to look at for running a record label. I mean why not get like someone that is more wholesome like Mr Rogers!!!!! Ohh or maybe william shatner!!!! I mean he can be all ghetto too with his sexy tonality and voice! Heck if ya want someone ghetto just rename William Shatner as" Shat Attack!"

[lazyrighteye]

disregarding whether you believe its true or not... would it really surprise people?

What better way to promote iTunes (and therefore iPod, iPhone) then digital only distribution of popular artists.

Now, it may piss off the record labels (which it may have pissed of Universal already), but do they have a choice but to distribute on iTunes?

And as for choice of artists... it makes sense to have young-demographic users. translation: people who are far more likely to be online.

arn

Agreed!
Despite what people may think of their music (personally, not a fan), Jay-Z and Beyonce represent what is relevant, today, in popular music. I can see many near brilliant ideas stem form such a rumor - for all the obvious reasons others (who feel the same) have posted.

But this does make me wonder (having yet read all the posts) if this infringes on Apple Records, should Apple Inc. get this involved in "the biz."

All-in-all, I think it could be a greta move for Apple, as well as the industry as a whole. Only time will tell.
Interesting, regardless.

[sanford]

At the time, Jay-Z was reportedly shopping this new "super label" around with the major record labels "and to Apple - who [was] very interested in doing business".

Now, [url="http://www.moli.com/p/moliview/x/detail/192140/7"]Moli.com (http://www.macrumors.com) is claiming that "an inside industry source" says that its a done deal.

If true, Steve Jobs has developed a drinking problem. Or just gone of his bean. Multi-function mobile phones? Record labels?

Jobs's Apple-resurrecting mantra was all about products that did, more or less, one or two things, but did it or them very well. (Remember killing the Newton product? Was it a limited feature computer? Was it more of a PDA, a companion to a full-fledged? Was something else entirely, like a mobile communications device hampered by the fact mobile communications was at the time far too juvenile to support it? If it couldn't be one thing or another, it couldn't stay.) He wouldn't put video in the iPod forever because he believed movies on a small screen -- even a larger, wider screen than the current video iPod -- wasn't doing movies well. Then when he does put video in the iPod, it starts and stays for a long time only TV programming; an imperfect experience but better suited by it's nature to short-term viewing on a small, square screen. Then movies come to the iTunes store, but only shortly before the Apple TV is announced -- far in advance of shipping, as a matter of fact, as if it say, Buy our movies now and you can use them in their proper space before too long -- to provide a robust movie and TV programming experience on high-quality television sets. And of course the iPod and it's dock have both S-video and composite video-out capability, iTunes/iPod video actually, surprisingly, looks good on an HDTV, and the video iPod is rather easily repository of movies but not required as the primary viewing device. When video finally came to the iPod, far behind competitors, it came in the best, most flexible form -- that is, doing it well.

So what's going on? All this diversification. I've spent quite a bit of time with iPhones and although they do many things, they do nothing particularly well. The -- what do they call it in the advertisements? Watered-down, portable, crippled? Whichever -- this same Internet on the iPhone is still the very disabled Internet it claims not to be. E-mail is fine but no finer than some competing devices. As a small-scale iPod it's good enough, but even with the quantity of music you can fit into the space available on an 8GB iPhone, the touch interface is leagues behind the current iPods scroll-wheel for ease and speed of navigation. The keyboard is difficult to use; the touch sensitivity isn't responsive enough. The camera is mediocre, even counting out it won't record video, a standard feature on camera phones. Some tasks require far too many steps to complete. (By the way, it's still the coolest piece of new technology in a long time, feels great in the hand, a paragon of miniaturization and interface design innovation, but it just does too many things to do any couple of them well by Apple standards.)

I thought the iPhone was kind of an anomaly and suffers in this iteration from their first foray into a new market, one in which perhaps they're stretching it to belong -- although the first iPod did not suffer in the same way. But now a record label? What's going on? If Apple is trying to become a Sony, I suppose I can understand trying to re-architect the company and its products, but it seems that right now even Sony is having a rough go at being a Sony. I understand, too, trying to leverage their new-found popularity and trendsetting cachet to move into more markets, but isn't there some concern that if you're levering something an ounce too heavy with a bar a tiny bit too weak, you'll break the bar you have and be back where you started when you had no lever at all? Better perhaps to keep the lever you've got, doing a few things very well rather than a lot of things just about average or worse?

[Counter]

So funny when a story comes up about Apple + Whatever, that Whatever gets defended immensely by the masses here.

'Hip hop is awesome though! Have you seen Jay-Z? Have you seen his car? Tell me hip-hop isn't the genre that will bring in the most $$$. This isn't a passing fad, Jesus listened to hip-hop.'

Over here :apple:



Now over here. :apple:



Now here! :apple:

Baaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh *sheep icon*

[eenu]

I hope Apple do this in a view to screw Universal for their recent dummy spitting from their pram. I'd like to think Apple would however maintain a healthy relationship with the other labels that are happy to sell their music at a good fixed price on iTunes.

[dpaanlka]

The original comparisons the Lone Deranger was making. He cites a few fairly famous examples of products and rather than reply to the actual comparisons he made, you changed the topic of each and laughed them off. He mentions the popularity of Microsoft products (referring to their quality verses Apple's), and you bring up Microsoft vs. Commodore.

I think it should have been pretty obvious what my counter-point was... that Microsoft products must have had some attractive combinations of quality/price for them to overtake the many other competitors that were around besides Apple.

Commodore wasn't the topic of the comparison, but changing means you can dodge replying to the point.

No, that was my reply.

Then again when Deranger mentioned VHS...

It was fairly obvious Deranger was referring to VHS vs. Betamax, as it's a marketing example cited on these forums often. Yet, why did you bring up film projectors? To distract us. Then you mention DVD having supplanted VHS at this point in time. Once again -- not relevant to the conversation.

I thought it was perfectly relevant.

It takes the thread into a tangent rather than focusing on his point? :rolleyes:

Right, let's keep focused here... :rolleyes: :eek: :confused: ;) :mad:

Yes, and they might have chosen a different hip-hop/R&B artist had they not been lost in the flood of hype surrounding those two. You missing my point, consumer choice is directly influenced by consumer information, in the absence of knowledge, and public will choose from what they believe there is.

I guess I'm still missing your point. I don't think somehow putting every artist on the radio is reasonable at all. People don't want to hear every song only once ever in their life. I would say that a majority of people who listen to the radio as MTV and Hip-Hop dictates is people ages 14 - 25. Have you ever been to a large gathering of such people? Have you EVER heard them get excited about a song they never heard before? No, of course not. People like to get "into" certain songs that they hear a lot, and know everybody else knows. It makes parities and other forms of socializing a lot of fun.

Uh, do you have anything to back up this statement

Do you want me to back up where I live, back up that hip-hop is most popular here, or back up that alternative stations often fail?

cause you don't know where I am or what music I listen to.

"Garth Brooks" was an example of someone you almost never hear on Chicago stations, that certainly would not be accepted by most people in this area. I could have picked anybody, Garth Brooks just popped into my mind. I'm not implying that you are an avid Garth Brooks fan.

I have yet to state an opinion on this type of music in this thread.

Sure you did, when you implied that everyone listening to hip-hop or rap is a corporate controlled zombie a few lines up.

blah blah blah more posts of how offended I am you assumed to know my musical taste

Right, but this thread isn't a private conversation between me and you. I tossed into the "intended audience" everyone else in this thread that says rap is garbage solely because they don't like it.

No, I suggest the stations play a wide range of music that their listeners want, have people bring in CD's and play something no ones ever heard before, perhaps guest DJ's, ect. Rather than stick to a corporate and soft-money fueled playlist that limits public exposure to an anointed few.

This is how many college stations operate.

You're right, this is how Bradley's EDGE station works. I believe, at any given time, their audience is between zero and five. And Bradley is located in a fairly large city.

People chose IE because it was already there.

That seems like a pretty reasonable excuse to me.

It shipped on their PC. Had they needed to get a web browser first thing, many would have made a different choice. At the time when IE started shipping with Windows, Netscape was the market leading browser. Why did IE suddenly start to gain marketshare? It was already there. People were new to the internet, didn't know what choices they had. Hey, IE is here and it works well enough, let's just use this.

Also, note that Netscape was not free. You had to pay for it. Microsoft's response to this threat of another company was to ship a competitor to their product for free. It doesn't matter if Microsoft loses money on a web browser they're developing but have no revenue from if they have dollars pouring in from the Windows/Office juggernaut. But Netscape only had a couple products, Navigator not getting sales put them out of business. And once Netscape was gone, Microsoft stopped developing IE. They didn't need to. The dragon was dead: England prevails. Note: when a company does what Microsoft did with actual products (as opposed to software) it's called dumping, and it's illegal.

I have a few "unrelated and off-topic changes of subject" to respond with:

Firstly, some of what you described was a quality of IE that people liked. The fact that it was already there (no need to download on 28.8 or 33.6 modems) and that it was free.

Secondly, Microsoft didn't "stop" developing IE. By the time the original Netscape died out (at version 4.8) Internet Explorer was pretty far ahead of Netscape. Evidence of this, besides actually using the two products, can be found in the fact that Netscape 4.8 didn't simply change it's name to Mozilla (and eventually produce Firefox), but instead a major re-write and "beefing up" of Netscape/Mozilla was required before it could actually be considered competitive again.

Finally, Netscape is not actually dead. There actually is a dedicated staff still working on it. Version 9 for Mac OS X was released recently, is Intel native, and really quite nice. You can download it here: http://browser.netscape.com/

I never said the was "no reason" to choose VHS. The fact that VHS one is more than the "quality" of the product was Lone Deranger's point.

I think we're using "quality" differently. You're talking about the physical quality of the product. I'm talking about the quality added to customer's lives.

I've had to go all the way back to the beginning of this thread of conversation to get back on track now that you've taken us so far off with your baseless attacks.

Right...

[morespce54]

...Focus on your core business.

Which one, the Computer or the Music biz? ;)

[BRLawyer]

Wow. Who said that?
It's one thing to say you don't like the music genre (which is fine), but it's another thing to tossing around your ************* about "affirmative action" in "African American" music. So, somehow "African American" artists aren't allowed to make money and live like rockstars? Hm. Odd. Sounds like that's what, say, almost all commercialized music artists do these days.

But, who am I to argue with a fool? Go figure... :rolleyes:

You are the one trolling here, so chill out. "African American" artists can do whatever they want, but I don't feel like accepting their racism towards others. When someone makes a videoclip showing ONLY blacks or whatever you prefer, this IS racism, period. Affirmative action is just another face of reverse discrimination, in that it gives privileges based on ethnical origins or similar stupid parameters (just like being "Aryan" for some or being "Jew" for others).

I just hate these double-standards, and the US society is great at that. So if you are not happy with it, try finding better arguments then, instead of quoting someone else's "lines of wisdom".

[iCe Cube]

Blacksmith is I believe Talib Kweli's record label.

I think Blacksmith is the super group composed of Kweli, Jean Grae, Hi-Tek etc...might be wrong though.

[tribulation]

This disgraceful and disgusting rumor better stay a RUMOR. What an utter joke. Not just the fact of them diversifying into totally crowded territory that will take significant time from their more 'important' issues that are being already so neglected, but the lack of talent they choose to debut with?

Holy mother of god. If this is true, Steve, please retire while you're ahead. :confused::confused:

[sanford]

So funny when a story comes up about Apple + Whatever, that Whatever gets defended immensely by the masses here.

'Hip hop is awesome though! Have you seen Jay-Z? Have you seen his car? Tell me hip-hop isn't the genre that will bring in the most $$$. This isn't a passing fad, Jesus listened to hip-hop.'

Counter, you make me laugh (in a good way, not a you're an idiot way). here and there, I've made what I think are some considered, valid arguments against the design and usefulness of the iPhone, and especially the way in which it is sold and serviced. I've been beaten to death for these opinions in a virtual sense -- although, oddly enough, not so much on these forums.

I agree, I think Apple is getting a bit of all-over-the-map disease and although easily treated with some wise realignment of business goals, if left unchecked this ailment can be quite lethal.

For the people talking about "trashing" hip-hop because it's not to an individual's taste, I don't really like hip-hop except for a very limited selection of work from a very few artists that are often not at all what the hip-hop aficionados consider best representative of the genre. But still I don't dismiss hip-hop. It's a truly original American art form in music, much like jazz, that has spread across the world, where in different cultures it's developed its own particular attributes. Such a thing shouldn't be so readily dismissed, even though it is not much to my taste.

And someone mentioned Universal's dropping their contract with Apple, moving to an at-will model. There's no indication Universal will stop selling all of their catalog to Apple or that Apple will refuse to sell it -- this would be foolish for both parties -- but Universal is in some sort of "king-making" phase right now, and they wish to try and shift some of the business away from iTunes if they can. They're doing the same thing with high-def DVDs, being the only major American studio to exclusively support HD DVD format, while Blu-ray Disc (BD) is way out ahead in sales numbers now, even having launched later, and some analysts are already calling HD DVD dead in the water on both the media distribution and data fronts. I don't know I'd go that far just yet, but certainly BD is well on its way to becoming the high-def format "winner" -- bearing in my DVD by far remains the standard in home video media. Yet still Universal will not release their catalog on BD or even acknowledge that they might even possibly consider doing so in the future. Although they surely won't in the end, they give all appearances of trying to go down with the ship. Obstinate. Even when no one is asking they go exclusively BD, as several major studios already are, but only that they support both formats, as a few studios do.

So they're stubbornly trying to make the king out of HD DVD, and they're likely to lose that market manipulation by a wide margin. I wouldn't expect any difference in the music market. Right now there's iTunes and there's everything else. I'm not sure how great that is for the consumer myself, but right now it's the case. But we really can't put that on Apple as almost all iTunes music and video -- except for these very few "exclusives", often time-limited -- is sold on CD or one of the standard or high-def video formats, and through other online, downloadable distribution services. It's the rest of the market that can't get it together. Microsoft had the best shot with their Plays For Sure format; although still proprietary, it's available from several online music stores and supported by many digital music devices. But then they released Zune and don't even support their own Plays For Sure format, but have created an entirely new proprietary format only available through the Zune store. Besides the titanic iPod branding popularity and huge installed base, I think this business of yet another new, exclusive format for their digital player, from a company that already had a proprietary format that they called Plays for Sure of all things, has had no little part in Zune crashing so hard, so fast.

Expect Universal to keep trying to create distractions so they can fault their preferred vendors and formats to all-star status. Expect them to keep failing until they come up with something besides their all-or-nothing strategy.

[sanford]

You are the one trolling here, so chill out. "African American" artists can do whatever they want, but I don't feel like accepting their racism towards others. When someone makes a videoclip showing ONLY blacks or whatever you prefer, this IS racism, period. Affirmative action is just another face of reverse discrimination, in that it gives privileges based on ethnical origins or similar stupid parameters (just like being "Aryan" for some or being "Jew" for others).

I just hate these double-standards, and the US society is great at that. So if you are not happy with it, try finding better arguments then, instead of quoting someone else's "lines of wisdom".

First I think it's important to note that I don't think hip-hop's success is based on any kind of affirmative-action-like preferential bias to blacks or black culture in the States. It's truly a unique art form and a cultural phenomenon, especially with young people, all over the world amongst many, many races and cultures. It's important on that virtue alone. And this from a person who personally does not find hip-hop music, fashion or lifestyle to his taste.

What you mention about hip-hop videos devoid of any race but blacks, I can certainly see you interpret it as a kind of racism -- although take a look around and you'll see plenty of video entertainment showing only whites without having intent of anti-black bias. But it's not traditional racism as we know it in this country. And it doesn't mean the black hip-hop artist with only blacks in his music videos hates whites, or considers whites inferior to blacks, or any such thing. It's just the sort of latitude afforded a racial population that took it on the chin for many, many years in the States, and is seen as having the at least temporary right to show preferential bias to their own race in hiring, etc., for projects they control. It is, as you allude to, informal affirmative action.

You can make the argument that affirmative action doesn't work and I'd disagree with you. I think affirmative action has done and continues to do some good in stabilizing black culture within our national culture. Is it working well? I don't think so; I don't think it ever has. Part of the problem is that no matter how progressive an individual thinks he is, it's part of the human condition to be biased toward people who are like you or are like what you wish to be, and biased against people who are not, who are different. People will always make distinctions based on race and in mixed-race societies this will always cause at least some strife. The big problem for the States is putting blacks on an equal footing with whites in access and opportunity. And they have not been, are not now, and I can't see they will be in the future or how we'd get that done. So stop-gaps like formal and informal affirmative action are going to continue, because, perhaps lamentably, they are the best way we have to create a more equal playing field in a society and economy that is very rough on anyone who doesn't get an equal start. And if the parents don't get that fair start, their children lose, too, and then their children's children lose: it never ends. This concept is nothing new.

[netdoc66]

You are the one trolling here, so chill out. "African American" artists can do whatever they want, but I don't feel like accepting their racism towards others. When someone makes a videoclip showing ONLY blacks or whatever you prefer, this IS racism, period. Affirmative action is just another face of reverse discrimination, in that it gives privileges based on ethnical origins or similar stupid parameters (just like being "Aryan" for some or being "Jew" for others).

I just hate these double-standards, and the US society is great at that. So if you are not happy with it, try finding better arguments then, instead of quoting someone else's "lines of wisdom".

You're a funny guy. I like how you put quotes around African American. It's cute. As for affirmative action, there would probably be a lot less Black people in good jobs. When you say "reverse discrimination" how can that be? Blacks would be shut out with people like you to determine who gets the job.

What's the comment about only Blacks being in a video clip? If you flip the concept every movie with whites and only whites in it is racist as well. Is that what you're saying? I hope you aren't really a lawyer. Your clients should be afraid, very afraid.

Apple is coming to the hood son. Holla at cha boy!

[killerrobot]

I never realized that Apple had all the recording experience necessary to get a record label off the ground.:rolleyes:
Even if Jay-Z and Beyonce do, better hope they never split up -- or did they already? I can't keep those stars lives straight anymore.

[BRLawyer]

You're a funny guy. I like how you put quotes around African American. It's cute. As for affirmative action, there would probably be a lot less Black people in good jobs. When you say "reverse discrimination" how can that be? Blacks would be shut out with people like you to determine who gets the job.

What's the comment about only Blacks being in a video clip? If you flip the concept every movie with whites and only whites in it is racist as well. Is that what you're saying? I hope you aren't really a lawyer. Your clients should be afraid, very afraid.

Apple is coming to the hood son. Holla at cha boy!

Simple fact: you don't fight racism with more racism. It is CLEAR that "blacks-only" clips are artificially created to give you the impression that "oh, we are reacting", even though most of us (people born after the 60s)wouldn't care about giving a black, purple, white or yellow person a job, as long as he/she has the MERITS, NOT color.

And who is black in your view? Someone with dark hair and 10% of African genes, or just the ones above 20%? Sorry, this is no less racist than what Nazis or Zionists do, regardless of any other trolling arguments you have in your mind.

As for the previous poster, thanks for the sensible reply; you make some good points, although I would argue with you for a long time on the legality and correctness of affirmative action. Thanks anyway.

[appledrummer]

please search your heart out for a song with these motifs. esp. a jay z or beyonce one. then get back to me.



http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Jay_Z/Miscellaneous/Big_Pimpin/196630.html

[Evangelion]

So Apple is partnering with a dumb-ass rapper. And is Beyonce one of those "singers" who'se idea if singing is "howling in to the microphone"?

Great, just ***** great. Hey Apple: How about partnering with some decent artists, instead of crud?

[netdoc66]

most of us (people born after the 60s)wouldn't care about giving a black, purple, white or yellow person a job, as long as he/she has the MERITS, NOT color.

I don't believe you. I have worked for people just like you. Believe me when I say this. I have had to be 200% better then the "other man" at my job. So as a person born in the 60's things don't change much in 1 generation and that's a very true statement.

Think different homie. :apple:

[Mr. Mustard]

Are we forgetting he runs Def Jam? He'll be fine, Apple will be fine, the universe will unfold as it should, relax.

[gifford]

I don't believe you. I have worked for people just like you. Believe me when I say this. I have had to be 200% better then the "other man" at my job. So as a person born in the 60's things don't change much in 1 generation and that's a very true statement.

Think different homie. :apple:

How can you say you dont believe him? Do you know him? Then shut up. How the hell are we ever going to move on with people like YOU about. Your being as narrow minded as the racists you hate.

And I mean people with your attitude not whatever genetic makeup you have.

[diamond.g]

So Apple is partnering with a dumb-ass rapper. And is Beyonce one of those "singers" who'se idea if singing is "howling in to the microphone"?

Great, just ***** great. Hey Apple: How about partnering with some decent artists, instead of crud?

Wow, just wow. Honest question. Are most of the members of the MacRumors forum white? I mean really what is the percentage?

Does it really matter who they are partnering with? Isn't the idea what we should be judging? I really can't understand some of the members here. Especially the ones who honestly believe that the minority (blacks etc) have any real say on what is popular or mainstream. (Sooo the people that run Universal, Sony, BMG, etc are what color again??) :(

[Peace]

This all boils down to one simple point.

Most people now days have bad taste when it comes to music.

Why do you think music sales are slumping.

Not just bad taste but the only thing most kids have heard is bad so they are used to it.

just my personal opinion.

[cliffjumper68]

I can't believe "Mac people" here are so behind. They should shelter themselves in their Jettas in fear "of the black man".

You fear mongers are pathetic. You should really just stop posting...and breathing if that helps.

Simply pathetic and sad of the racist people here. :(:mad:

:apple:

Don't paint everyone in this thread by a few comments made by people who have been offended by a few artists. As many people know there are a ton of great hip-hop, rap artists that have tremendous messages. Most modern music including rap, hip-hop, rock,and country has come from the soul/ blues music influence. I may be old fashioned but I love listening to Ray Charles's Georgia in my car on the way to work, that song incorporates the underpinnings of soul, rap, and hip-hop in it's transitions and has a wonderful message. My point is that not all people here are racist, ignorant, or small minded.

[johnee]

Yeah, then I'd throw up all over it. Beyonce the face of Apple... :BARF!!!!:

i totally agree.

i'm puking just thinking about it.

now, since mine is the final word, i say :

this is no good. Apple will stop any and all activity in this area.

[gwangung]

Simple fact: you don't fight racism with more racism.

Neither simple nor a fact.

When a company is proven, in a court of law, to have discriminated against an applicant, they have to have programs to prevent future discrimination. And the burden is on THEM to show they aren't continuing to practice racism. Affirmative action programs (which are not quotas) is the cheapest way to do that.

[cliffjumper68]

Wow, just wow. Honest question. Are most of the members of the MacRumors forum white? I mean really what is the percentage?

Does it really matter who they are partnering with? Isn't the idea what we should be judging? I really can't understand some of the members here. Especially the ones who honestly believe that the minority (blacks etc) have any real say on what is popular or mainstream. (Sooo the people that run Universal, Sony, BMG, etc are what color again??) :(

Just as posted above, not everyone fits the mold of a few posters. I am white and I have never felt that intrinsically makes me racist, bigoted, or narrow minded in any way. My heroes and role models span every race and gender. I do agree with you that the concept is what is important here and I think the concept is consistent with Apple, Inc.; "the experience". You can just tell when you are dealing with an Apple product or service because they share the same quality of experience. I for one would love to experience an Apple music label. I think it would be different, and that would be great!

[eenu]

funny i thought this thread was about apple becoming a record label..... seems to have gone off into a political debate about race.

Guys if you want to have that debate can one of you start it in the appropriate place post a link to it then let the thread get back on topic?

[Evangelion]

Wow, just wow. Honest question. Are most of the members of the MacRumors forum white? I mean really what is the percentage?

An honest question: What the ******* does race have to do with disliking certain type of music? "You dislike rap! You are a racist!", oh give me a frigging break! It just happens that I find rap to be crap. I find the entire rap "culture" to be shallow and repulsive, and that includes all those white people in it! I mean, what merit does a "culture" have where the entire point is to show off, wear humungous gold-chains, drive around in luxury-cars that bounce around, disparage women and generally tell everyone what a cool gangsta you are and how you waste your money or frivolous things (gotta get some of that Cristal!)? What positive things does that give to the society? Answer: nothing.

Does it really matter who they are partnering with?

Um, yes it does. The artists they are partnering with represent certain type of music. And their choices reflect their values and priorities. So they value rap and howling women. thanks, but no thanks. I happen to be more oriented towards rock, and their choices indicate that their priorities are somewere else.

Isn't the idea what we should be judging? I really can't understand some of the members here. Especially the ones who honestly believe that the minority (blacks etc) have any real say on what is popular or mainstream. (Sooo the people that run Universal, Sony, BMG, etc are what color again??) :(

What does race have to do with this? Nothing. I dislike rap and the culture that surrounds it. I also dislike R&B with passion. And yes, most rap-artists and R&B-singers are black. No: this still does not have anything to do with race. I also dislike Country with passion, and approximitely 100% of country-singers are white. Does that mean that I hate white people? No it does not. Then why should me hating rap and R&B imply that I hate black people? Becase you are jumping to conclusions and suffer from severe case of double-standards? If I dislike something that some black dude does, I'm racist. I MUST love everything every single black person does, otherwise I'm being racist? No, it doesn't work that way. Even if white people came up with rap, I would still dislike it.

I'm getting sick and tired of people who think that disliking some type of music means that the person is "racist". Liking or disliking certain types of music has NOTHING to do with race, and it has EVERYTHING to do with music!

[cliffjumper68]

Wow, just wow. Honest question. Are most of the members of the MacRumors forum white? I mean really what is the percentage?

Does it really matter who they are partnering with? Isn't the idea what we should be judging? I really can't understand some of the members here. Especially the ones who honestly believe that the minority (blacks etc) have any real say on what is popular or mainstream. (Sooo the people that run Universal, Sony, BMG, etc are what color again??) :(

Just as posted above, not everyone fits the mold of a few posters. I am white and I have never felt that intrinsically makes me racist, bigoted, or narrow minded in any way. My heroes and role models span every race and gender. I do agree with you that the concept is what is important here and I think the concept is consistent with Apple, Inc.; "the experience". You can just tell when you are dealing with an Apple product or service because they share the same quality of experience. I for one would love to experience an Apple music label. I think it would be different, and that would be great!

[Fwink!]

I dislike country music - so I guess I hate southern white people.
I'm not too fond of Polka music, so out with the Poles & gypsies
I don't dig klezmar music either, so I guess I'm against jews
I'm not a regular classical listener, so you could infer that I don't dead white men.

See where this is going?


Apple needs to develop an INDEPENDENT music channel. Not create the Apple Core Rap Posse.

[nxent]

don't mind jay z, but beyonce i can't stand...
an interesting possibility on the part of apple. almost brilliant from a business point of view. if universal is threatening to remove it's business from iTms, it would open the door for other labels to follow suit which would be bad for apple. so it make sense for apple to consider starting it's own record label which would at the very least give apple some type of fall back. but i think this is a bluff aimed at universal and other studios alike. whether apple had a speciific hand in this rumor is irrelevant. it's purpose is to show the record labels that they're merely the middleman and can hence be excluded entirely. this isn't necessarily a move apple wants to take, maybe as a last resort. So with this possibility and real artist expressing interest in an Apple music label, I'm sure universal will be a tad more apprehensive about their next move.

edit,, hoping this post isn't too late, seeing as how off track the forum is....

edit #2. jay z and beyonce are high visibility artist.. ie, artists, like them or not, people have heard of. it provides a bit more credibility to the notion that 'artist are unhappy with Sony and Universal, and hence, willing to leave'. more credibility than the independent artists. it's purpose is to get public opinion, not define jay z as the face of apple...

[gkarris]

iPods for music
:apple:TV for TV
iPhone for phones
Beyonce for a record label

Apple, are you leaving the computer biz?

"don't you ever for a second get to thinkin'
you're irreplaceable " :p

[dernhelm]

This rumor makes great sense when you consider the real world vision of Steve Jobs. He focuses on the experience, the service offering. Look at what they have already done for indy bands through the free single of the week. This is a natural extension of that philosophy. I hope we finally get a label that is genuinely concerned for the artist/ fan rather than interrogating 12 year old little girls and suing 89 year old grandmothers. Go Steve!

I agree that they COULD make it work - but only by agreeing to take the initiative and go out on that limb far enough to shake things up and make a real statement. That could mean angering a lot of labels, and possibly (for a short while) causing investor angst about the future of the iTunes music store. If Apple's vision is truly long term, and they are willing to take on some short term tribulation, they could possibly be the pebble that starts the avalanche that leads to long term change in the music industry.

That means, however, that Apple will really need to steel itself to take on an industry that has no desire to change. I just don't see anything like that in the cards right now. Apple has enough already on its plate. One of the things investors can hang their hat on is iTMS and commensurate iPod revenue, I don't know if Apple wants to put that at risk right now.

It sure would be cool though.

[briand05]

Some people should keep their opinions to themselves if they can't express it nicely (ie Rap is crap vs. I don't like rap).

[diamond.g]

An honest question: What the ******* does race have to do with disliking certain type of music? "You dislike rap! You are a racist!", oh give me a frigging break! It just happens that I find rap to be crap. I find the entire rap "culture" to be shallow and repulsive, and that includes all those white people in it! I mean, what merit does a "culture" have where the entire point is to show off, wear humungous gold-chains, drive around in luxury-cars that bounce around, disparage women and generally tell everyone what a cool gangsta you are and how you waste your money or frivolous things (gotta get some of that Cristal!)? What positive things does that give to the society? Answer: nothing.
I never said it did have merit. I was merely finding it funny that the people that pay for the crap that is put out (because most if not all modern music is crap) aren't in the minority.



Um, yes it does. The artists they are partnering with represent certain type of music. And their choices reflect their values and priorities. So they value rap and howling women. thanks, but no thanks. I happen to be more oriented towards rock, and their choices indicate that their priorities are somewhere else.
And who is to say that there aren't more artist wanting to jump ship but are waiting for other (was going to say more successful, but that is subjective) artist to do so first?


What does race have to do with this? Nothing. I dislike rap and the culture that surrounds it. I also dislike R&B with passion. And yes, most rap-artists and R&B-singers are black. No: this still does not have anything to do with race. I also dislike Country with passion, and approximitely 100% of country-singers are white. Does that mean that I hate white people? No it does not. Then why should me hating rap and R&B imply that I hate black people? Becase you are jumping to conclusions and suffer from severe case of double-standards? If I dislike something that some black dude does, I'm racist. I MUST love everything every single black person does, otherwise I'm being racist? No, it doesn't work that way. Even if white people came up with rap, I would still dislike it.
I was never saying you or anyone else were racist. I personally have no problems with any genre of music. But some of the posters here were acting like Apple has done them personally wrong, and I think it is silly.

In America (like most of the world) if it makes money it is pushed to death.


I'm getting sick and tired of people who think that disliking some type of music means that the person is "racist". Liking or disliking certain types of music has NOTHING to do with race, and it has EVERYTHING to do with music!


I also was honestly curious what the ethnic makeup of macrumors is, I mean it already seems like most Apple users are more educated, and more well off (the stuff isn't cheap). So it wouldn't take much to understand why a certain genre's of music are not appreciated/liked/listened to what have you.

I am sorry if what I said came across as sounding racist or accusatory of anyone. That was not my intention. Shoot I wish we could all just get along. :D

[Evangelion]

You're a funny guy. I like how you put quotes around African American. It's cute.

Well, I for one find the term "African-American" to be pretty darn confusing. An example: A school in USA held a competition for the "African-American student of the year". A white student who had emigrated from South-Africa took part to the competition. He was suspended. Why? I mean, when you really think about it, he was the only "African-American" in the school! He was actually born in Africa! So why couldn't he be considered "African-American"? Because he wasn't black? If that is the case, and "African-American" refers to the color of the skin (black), why not just drop this BS and use the term "black"? Why is "African-American" OK, whereas "black" is not?

As for affirmative action, there would probably be a lot less Black people in good jobs. When you say "reverse discrimination" how can that be? Blacks would be shut out with people like you to determine who gets the job.

Since overwhelming majority of people are not racists, blacks would still get good jobs. Things like slavery-repartitions and affirmative actions just instill victim-mentality to the black population and they raise resentment in the other demographics. They would look at blacks and think "why should they receive special treatment?".

Instead of using legislation to basically tell people that "this particular group of people needs special treatment because they can't take care of themselves", we should tell people that white, blacks, reds and yellows are all equal (which they are). Affirmative Action and other legislation like that does the exact opposite.

Affirmative Action might do some good at fixing the symptom (poor jobs etc.), but while it does that, it actually reinforces the cause. It just drives a wedge between whites and blacks and it makes it seem like black people are incapable of taking care of themselves, and they need legislation to do it for them. It just reinforces the victim-mentality and increases resentment in the white population. Instead of focusing of fixing the symptom, focus on fixing the cause.

I for one think that blacks would do just fine even without reverse discrimination. You obviously feel that they need extra help. I wonder that which of us is the "racist" here....

[cliffjumper68]

I agree that they COULD make it work - but only by agreeing to take the initiative and go out on that limb far enough to shake things up and make a real statement. That could mean angering a lot of labels, and possibly (for a short while) causing investor angst about the future of the iTunes music store. If Apple's vision is truly long term, and they are willing to take on some short term tribulation, they could possibly be the pebble that starts the avalanche that leads to long term change in the music industry.

That means, however, that Apple will really need to steel itself to take on an industry that has no desire to change. I just don't see anything like that in the cards right now. Apple has enough already on its plate. One of the things investors can hang their hat on is iTMS and commensurate iPod revenue, I don't know if Apple wants to put that at risk right now.

It sure would be cool though.

Steve's open letter regarding DRM might be a clue that they are indeed ready to be that pebble. I agree though some rough waters to face.

[Evangelion]

I never said it did have merit. I was merely finding it funny that the people that pay for the crap that is put out (because most if not all modern music is crap) aren't in the minority.

Um, no, you weren't. You replied to my comment by saying (and I quote):

Wow, just wow. Honest question. Are most of the members of the MacRumors forum white? I mean really what is the percentage?

You didn't talk about mony at all, you talked about race. And you were seemingly negatively amazed by my comment. And let me repeat: what does race have to do with this?

And who is to say that there aren't more artist wanting to jump ship but are waiting for other (was going to say more successful, but that is subjective) artist to do so first?

Jump to what? Management of Apple's record-label? Jay-Z and Beyonce will reportedly run the new division. Are you saying that they would also get Metallica, Nightwish, AC/DC and Manowar to sit in the board of directors?

I was never saying you or anyone else were racist.

But you implied it.

I personally have no problems with any genre of music. But some of the posters here were acting like Apple has done them personally wrong, and I think it is silly.

I have no personal interest in this thing, apart from the fact that their new endeavour would propably not interest me, since their apparent choice of management represents a set of values and priorities that I do not share.

[Zigster]

Wow didn't know your basic macgeek was so short-sighted.

Why shouldn't Apple become a record label? Why the hell not? Cuz it makes you uncomfortable. Because you don't care for Jay-Z? (a business man if there ever was one).

Straight from Artist to Digital Download, that's how it should be. The Record Companies have been pick-pocketing music for too many years now.

Granted, there would be an unearthly howl and fight from record companies. But I hope Apple puts Beyonce on their home page. Think that will get more hits than the latest imac update? LOL.

[diamond.g]

Um, no, you weren't. You replied to my comment by saying (and I quote):

The race (should have said ethnicity) question was actually a separate idea, but I am bad about actually separating my idea's by paragraphs.


You didn't talk about mony at all, you talked about race. And you were seemingly negatively amazed by my comment. And let me repeat: what does race have to do with this?

And by my other comment, ethnicity has tons to do with it. Like I said before the minority doesn't make crappy music profitable.



Jump to what? Management of Apple's record-label? Jay-Z and Beyonce will reportedly run the new division. Are you saying that they would also get Metallica, Nightwish, AC/DC and Manowar to sit in the board of directors?

Well there isn't anything stopping Apple from doing just that. Have major bands from each genre sit on a board and make those kinds of decisions. Actually that is a freaking genius idea. (Seriously, no sarcasm)


But you implied it.

Well I said I didn't mean to come across that way, but I guess that is what I should have assumed it would come across as. My bad.



I have no personal interest in this thing, apart from the fact that their new endeavour would propably not interest me, since their apparent choice of management represents a set of values and priorities that I do not share.
Well I think their choice of management is all about making money, which seems right in line with any business goal. Not agreeing with how the money is made is fine.

I recommend everyone go here (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/film.htm), and try to find out when the video may be playing near them. I saw this video while in Hawaii while attending Girlfest. It is actually kinda eye opening on the whole state of Hip-Hop. A short summary would be: It is done because it makes money, and when it stops making money it will go away(more or less).

[Lone Deranger]

Indeed... your average rap debacle. The thought of Apple potentially high profile partnering with an individual who expresses himself in such a crass manner is a sad one indeed no matter how you spin doctor it.

As someone who appreciates skillful and knowledgeable use of language I fail to recognise what artistic merit there is in mixing up profanity, contempt for women and mangled up english words to, sort of make them rhyme, with line after line of "uh-huh uhh, uh-huh.. Ge-ge-geyeah, geyeah.." :confused: The grammar is so poor that it's probably better described as entropy of the english language rather than art. Then again, literally anything gets called art these days rendering the word virtually meaningless.

So I suppose I'm a racist too now in some posters books? I guess it could be seen as pretty telling of the educational merits of rap in general that these individuals fail to even grasp the basic definition of the word racist.

http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Jay_Z/Miscellaneous/Big_Pimpin/196630.html

[nefarious]

They don't want the headache. Revenue's by comparison to costs are pale and simply not worth the investment; this is not theory. It's about principles and not personalities (or the cult of). There are simply too many points of failure, conflicts of interest, barriers to entry, etc. You can't be everything to everyone.
I am thinking of a New Age style Label, where Apple offers support on the iTunes store, and perhaps a free Streaming radio station to give people access to the songs, not a Subscription that is for sale or anything as I think that is a terrible idea.

The artists are responsible for doing pretty much the rest, though I can see a Management group handling touring and merchandising for the Bands, but not Apple doing any of this.

[Fwink!]

I am thinking of a New Age style Label, where Apple offers support on the iTunes store, and perhaps a free Streaming radio station to give people access to the songs, not a Subscription that is for sale or anything as I think that is a terrible idea.

The artists are responsible for doing pretty much the rest, though I can see a Management group handling touring and merchandising for the Bands, but not Apple doing any of this.


The thing is, they already have that sort of thing in a way - except it requires bands to go thru a middle man agency that takes a 35% cut off the top for getting your music into the iTunes catalog.

Take a look at garageband.com - lots of music but no sales system. Without a DRM tool that artists can administer - your music goes out and disappears.

We don't need less DRM we need ACCESS to DRM to protect digital rights. Big artists can make it up on volume. But the little guy is out of luck.

Anyone remember mp3.com? A great idea that was bought out and dismantled before it's time. As an artist you got paid when people listened alone! Where is that business model today?

I don't even know who Jay Z is, or know any of his music, and Beyonce to me is a character on a SNL comedy skit hanging out with Prince. With that said, I really would be disappointed to see a hip/hop centric music distribution system operated by Apple. Whatever they may do, it needs to be genre neutral.

[sanford]

iPods for music
:apple:TV for TV
iPhone for phones
Beyonce for a record label

Apple, are you leaving the computer biz?

"don't you ever for a second get to thinkin'
you're irreplaceable " :p

*iPods, computer peripheral that plays music and now video from your computer, gets the media off the computer and makes it portable. Minimal digression, well worth the risky move in brand recognition they've established with the general public. Although I don't know how much it does for the Macs, as I was in an very upscale local mall the other day and overheard at least two people say something about wanting to go to "the iPod store".

*AppleTV, computer peripheral that plays music and video through the proper A/V system in your home. More of a digression, but nice as a non-portable music storage device and the only way really -- besides hooking up your iPod to your TV every time you want to watch -- to watch high quality movie and TV iTunes purchases. More practical than the iPod, but affordable and serves to cover that fabled 50 feet from the computer holding all the media to the living room, den, study, bedroom, wherever we primarily prefer to enjoy it.

*iPhone, well see, here's where we fall of the cliff. It's an iPod. In that sense it fits the above computer peripheral definition I used for the iPod, and it has contact and calendar support like the iPod. But it's a data/voice *mobile phone*, and a few parts of a PDA with it's Wi-Fi connectivity but limited application support. In the phone category, it loses all credibility as a computer peripheral because you can't even use it as Bluetooth data modem for your computer as you can with a huge number of Bluetooth phones. It's sort of hard to categorize really as it does more than simple phones but less than the more traditional smart-phones. Frankly, it's really a consumer gadget toy, like most up-market mobile phones: a status charm. It will sell some iTunes products. It won't sell iPods. It won't sell Macs. It won't sell Apple TVs. Won't sell any other Apple peripherals. Primarily what it will sell are itself, Apple's quite pricey Bluetooth headset when introduced -- though many customers may opt for quite capable, quality sets that have now come down in price to as little as a third the Apple's price (my stepfather bought last year's Jabra model on sale for $15 the other day; and Jabra tends to be pricey on the whole) -- and it well sell a lot of AT&T contracts. It's cool, it's nifty, there's some interface innovation there, though flawed, but it's an odd one all right. Why a phone?

*A record label, well we already fell off the cliff and are crumpled on the rocks far below, so why not?

[Blue Velvet]

Mod's note: From this point, please keep this thread on-topic, thanks.

If you'd like to discuss racial politics, please take it to this (http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47) forum. ;)

[sanford]

(Velvet, I wrote and posted this message before I read your message. To play small, benign games with words, it's really about musical politics -- which relates directly to Apple as a record label -- rather than racial politics, so I elected to leave it.)

An honest question: What the ******* does race have to do with disliking certain type of music? "You dislike rap! You are a racist!", oh give me a frigging break! It just happens that I find rap to be crap. I find the entire rap "culture" to be shallow and repulsive, and that includes all those white people in it! I mean, what merit does a "culture" have where the entire point is to show off, wear humungous gold-chains, drive around in luxury-cars that bounce around, disparage women and generally tell everyone what a cool gangsta you are and how you waste your money or frivolous things (gotta get some of that Cristal!)? What positive things does that give to the society? Answer: nothing.



Um, yes it does. The artists they are partnering with represent certain type of music. And their choices reflect their values and priorities. So they value rap and howling women. thanks, but no thanks. I happen to be more oriented towards rock, and their choices indicate that their priorities are somewere else.



What does race have to do with this? Nothing. I dislike rap and the culture that surrounds it. I also dislike R&B with passion. And yes, most rap-artists and R&B-singers are black. No: this still does not have anything to do with race. I also dislike Country with passion, and approximitely 100% of country-singers are white. Does that mean that I hate white people? No it does not. Then why should me hating rap and R&B imply that I hate black people? Becase you are jumping to conclusions and suffer from severe case of double-standards? If I dislike something that some black dude does, I'm racist. I MUST love everything every single black person does, otherwise I'm being racist? No, it doesn't work that way. Even if white people came up with rap, I would still dislike it.

I'm getting sick and tired of people who think that disliking some type of music means that the person is "racist". Liking or disliking certain types of music has NOTHING to do with race, and it has EVERYTHING to do with music!

Okay, first all rap is hip-hop but all hip-hop is not rap. Important distinction. Second with the exception of a tiny, tiny bit of hip-hop, I don't like hip-hop. I just don't like it. That's personal taste. But this whole sale dismissal of "rap as crap" and "hip-hop is garbage", wether born of racism or not, is untenable. We are talking about a truly unique American art form as significant as jazz, that speaks for at least a couple of generations, that has spread around the globe to many races and cultures, who have adopted it's ethic of free speech, standing up for oneself and self-esteem, and also flavored the music with their own additions. No, not all hip-hop has artistic merit, and yes some of it is just crass, as with most popular music. But some of it tells personal stories and stories of a culture within a culture that may be unpleasant to hear, that we don't want to hear, but this is art and it has merit, to listen to these stories and respond to them, negatively or positively.

And rock musicians and their priorities? Many rock musicians are and have been some of the greatest unethical hedonists of human history.

somebody mentioned the grammar in rap and what would he or she have said of most of the works of e e cummings? not all rules of language must be followed all the time.

Anyway, it's ridiculous on its face to dismiss hip-hop. Hip-hop is important and will have far-reaching influence on music of many genres. As Americans, we should be proud that though it has roots and now artists all over the place, as a formal art form it started here.

[tribulation]

No, we just think it's crap. ;)

LOL so perfectly said.
I don't think anyone on here cares about the rap 'community'. It's just pure talentless crap.

[kymac]

I don't think anyone on here cares about the rap 'community'. It's just pure talentless crap.

oh. good thing you know what you're talking about. :confused:

[sanford]

LOL so perfectly said.
I don't think anyone on here cares about the rap 'community'. It's just pure talentless crap.

That statement is the height of ignorance. Bearing in mind I've repeatedly mentioned I don't like hip-hop, it's not talentless crap. I don't like Kandinsky, either, but I can recognize his talent; his manner of expression is not to my taste, but there is artistic merit in his expression. One thing to dislike an art form and its associated culture, another thing entire to dismiss it's inherent value and some people's appreciation of it because you don't have a taste for it. If majority ruled in these matters, you'd have no Apple products. They'd have gone out of business in the late 1980s, at the latest.

But I'll take you at your word: If it's talentless crap, you do it. Pen us a hip-hop track, words and music, play the instruments, record the song as best you can, as you probably don't have training in music production and that's an involved skill, then find a place to upload it. Let the masses decide, at least the masses following this thread. Because if no hip-hop of any kind requires any talent at all, as lyricist or composer, then you should be able to do record a reasonable facsimile of a hip-hop track whether or not you have musical talent or training.

[briand05]

LOL so perfectly said.
I don't think anyone on here cares about the rap 'community'. It's just pure talentless crap.

Sickening ignorance.

[Evangelion]

Okay, first all rap is hip-hop but all hip-hop is not rap. Important distinction.

Not to me, since I don't care for hip-hop either.

But this whole sale dismissal of "rap as crap" and "hip-hop is garbage", wether born of racism or not, is untenable.

No it's not. It's my personal preference, and I have yet to hear a piece of rap-"music" that is good. Some are worse than others, but none are good.

We are talking about a truly unique American art form

So I should like it because it's "truly unique American art form"? As a Finn, why should I give American music special treatment?

as significant as jazz

Funny you should mention it: I hate jazz as well. To me, it's just a cacophony on unrelated notes strung together.

that speaks for at least a couple of generations, that has spread around the globe to many races and cultures, who have adopted it's ethic of free speech, standing up for oneself and self-esteem, and also flavored the music with their own additions.

Which is quite telling about the values and tastes of the newest addition to the line of generations. A truly sad state of affaird indeed.

And rock musicians and their priorities? Many rock musicians are and have been some of the greatest unethical hedonists of human history.

Yep, no argument here. But at least they are not actively pushing their values through their music. They don't use their music as a vessel to brag what great criminals they are. They do not glorify crime and paint themselves as part of the underworld. They do not refer to women as "bitches" in their music. Sure, there are exceptions, but I still don't like their music as such. Well, I DO like some music that contains rapping, but are not considered rap as such (like KLF or Snap!).

Anyway, it's ridiculous on its face to dismiss hip-hop. Hip-hop is important and will have far-reaching influence on music of many genres.

Propably. But that still doesn't mean that I should like it.

[nefarious]

The thing is, they already have that sort of thing in a way - except it requires bands to go thru a middle man agency that takes a 35% cut off the top for getting your music into the iTunes catalog.

Take a look at garageband.com - lots of music but no sales system. Without a DRM tool that artists can administer - your music goes out and disappears.

We don't need less DRM we need ACCESS to DRM to protect digital rights. Big artists can make it up on volume. But the little guy is out of luck.

Anyone remember mp3.com? A great idea that was bought out and dismantled before it's time. As an artist you got paid when people listened alone! Where is that business model today?

I don't even know who Jay Z is, or know any of his music, and Beyonce to me is a character on a SNL comedy skit hanging out with Prince. With that said, I really would be disappointed to see a hip/hop centric music distribution system operated by Apple. Whatever they may do, it needs to be genre neutral.

Apple can reduce the cost of there artists to say .70 cent tracks and $5 albums, use there leverate in Itunes and in motion pictures to get the artists more exposure, pay the artists a larger %, and Apple keeps selling more ipods/iphones, Apple TVs, etc..........

[sanford]

Not to me, since I don't care for hip-hop either.



No it's not. It's my personal preference, and I have yet to hear a piece of rap-"music" that is good. Some are worse than others, but none are good.



So I should like it because it's "truly unique American art form"? As a Finn, why should I give American music special treatment?



Funny you should mention it: I hate jazz as well. To me, it's just a cacophony on unrelated notes strung together.



Which is quite telling about the values and tastes of the newest addition to the line of generations. A truly sad state of affaird indeed.



Yep, no argument here. But at least they are not actively pushing their values through their music. They don't use their music as a vessel to brag what great criminals they are. They do not glorify crime and paint themselves as part of the underworld. They do not refer to women as "bitches" in their music. Sure, there are exceptions, but I still don't like their music as such. Well, I DO like some music that contains rapping, but are not considered rap as such (like KLF or Snap!).



Propably. But that still doesn't mean that I should like it.

The comments about appreciating hip-hop as an American art form were in general and pointed at Americans on this thread. I had no idea you were Finnish; of course you wouldn't defer to an American style of music.

There are *a lot* of rock music lyrics that glorify not just controversial lifestyles or drug use -- things that I can tolerate to some degree, that I don't so quickly condemn -- but flat-out immorality, not by any religious standard but by mere human decency. These may not be the rule but they are hardly the exception.

"But that still doesn't mean that I should like it."
Of course not. I never meant to suggest and I think I went out of my way to make it clear that my only point was that all of hip-hop should not be dismissed as "trash" or "crap" or whatever because one doesn't like it. Why should I expect you to like it when I don't like it myself?

But Charlie Parker, "a cacophony on unrelated notes strung together"? To each his own, but my stars.

[liv4Mac]

Sure does. Nevertheless I would say that most vinyl buyers are not your average mass market music consumer. That means vinyl will always remain a niche market and will never again rise to its former glory.

I totally agree... I think music should be moved to DVD's since movies are being moved to Blue-ray or HD-DVD. The advantage would be that music can be printed on 96khz 24bit or even 192khz 64bit. The sound quality would be many times greater than the 44.1khz 16bit cd quality. And also surround sound capabilities. That would bring a lot of :):):):):):)

MP3 just doesn't cut it for me.

[sanford]

I totally agree... I think music should be moved to DVD's since movies are being moved to Blue-ray or HD-DVD. The advantage would be that music can be printed on 96khz 24bit or even 192khz 64bit. The sound quality would be many times greater than the 44.1khz 16bit cd quality. And also surround sound capabilities. That would bring a lot of :):):):):):)

MP3 just doesn't cut it for me.

There's already a format called DVD Audio that has all the features you list. It hasn't caught on and is popular mostly for classical recordings, where the true digital surround sound capabilities matter the most for obvious reasons, because of the real and often significant physical distance between instruments in an orchestra -- gives you the sense of listening right in the front row or leaning on the lip of the pit. Also, to get true surround, the music must be originally recorded to support it -- or remixed from multichannel masters, which may produce an inferior result if the studio wasn't initially configured for a surround sound recording. That and most popular music in a wide range of genres employs production techniques that are antithetical to surround sound -- multiple discrete channel audio would actually degrade the quality of the recording as far as its producers intended.

I have some hearing fairly significant hearing loss in both ears, so I have can't really tell any difference between a 256kbps AAC and 128kbps AAC. I can, depending on the original recording, tell a bit of difference between a compact disc and a 128kpbs AAC. And I can discern notable difference -- although I was rather surprised I could -- between 128kbps AAC compressed recording played on a device connected via an optical connection, even only in two-channel stereo, and the same device connected via composite ("RCA") connections.

That being said, people with better hearing can tell more of a difference between 128 and 256 bit-rates, and between compressed audio files and compact disc audio. But generally *most* people don't care or can't tell *enough* difference to care between 128 bit-rate AAC audio and the original compact disc. At 256 bit-rate they barely notice. And these scenarios of noticing difference usually only in "side-by-side" comparisons.

So I'm not saying you're not right about the differences in quality, because you are. But I am saying that the music-buying public in general is content with 128 bit-rate AAC and completely satisfied with compact disc audio. For that reason I believe CD audio will remain the standard until it is completely subsumed by electronic distribution. When that will be I don't know -- but I expect farther in the future than most people imagine. CDs are still immensely popular, even though people wanting diverse selections are more often forced to online shopping, having the physical media shipped to them.

Me, I like vinyl. I'm afraid I'm not someone who can logically contend that the analog nuances of vinyl recordings are actually superior to the so-called sterile digital recordings. This may have been true in the early-to-mid 1980s, perhaps a little longer, but digital recording and transfer has vastly improved. I like vinyl because of the *way* it sounds, not because it's superior; for the same reason I like to listen to original mono recordings in the original mono, even though the available stereo remixes arguably *sound* better, or at least fuller. Honestly, I think digital recordings, all things considered, are very probably superior. They're certainly more rugged, transportable and flexible in use than vinyl -- and that will win the day with the vast majority of customers.

[tribulation]

oh. good thing you know what you're talking about. :confused:

You might be surprised.

[Yankees 4 Life]

people stop poopooing apples efforts... they will do an excellent job not meddling in their mess...

[sanford]

people stop poopooing apples efforts... they will do an excellent job not meddling in their mess...

It's not bashing, not on my part, anyway. Part of it is how long you've used Apple's products. Me, since 1978. So I saw them as kings of a new industry, pushed off the throne, became the also-rans, then tried to innovate before their time but generated enough niche-market interest to stay afloat, then tried brought in Scully who ousted Jobs and in power struggle and tried to turn Apple into any commodity computer maker, except they made their own operating system, too, while still trying here and there to innovate -- so they split their mission at that point and it almost put them out of business. After some wallowing the muck, they bought Next Software, formerly NeXT Computer, one to get the NextStep operating system which provided an instant, outstanding platform upon which to build their next-generation operating system because their internal efforts were far delayed and floundering; and two, to bring Steve Jobs back in, who was widely considered to have difficulties managing the business end of things at Apple, had gone on to build Next, where again he there was trouble on the business end, but yet again he created some incredibly innovative products. Someone or several people on Apple's board determined that Jobs was after all the probably the visionary heralded back in the late 1970s and with the introduction of the amazing but somewhat power-starved Macintosh, decided they needed vision and leadership, and could hire people more suited to the task to keep the books, and that while the computer had chosen power and specifications -- specifications often meaningless to the end consumer -- over lots of innovation, it was possible people would respond favorably to a little more power and spec-obsession along with rekindled innovation.

At the time Jobs came back to Apple, they had their fingers in a lot of pies, really they were all just segments of the computer industry, but they made computers, PDAs, printers, digital cameras -- they were over-diversified. So Jobs slowly and then suddenly killed off all these distractions and focused on Macs. The first big digression was wireless networking, which was a key to Apple innovation when they included both the client and access point devices for these new way of networking computers. It fit and added value to the Apple experience. The next big turn in the road in products, because they also created their own exclusive retail presence, was the iPod. A lot of people, a lot of people here -- you know who you are -- maligned the iPod as the most ho-hum product Apple had created since the Scully years; it was called the first thing that will fail miserably since Jobs got the first iMac shipping. I have to give myself credit for some unusual prescience and note that I thought it was the coolest thing they'd ever made and I bought one the first day they came into the new retail stores. But I did do some reading about it beforehand and discovered that based on how Apple had designed it and integrated it with iTunes it was not indeed just another MP3 player.

All this has worked out well. The Apple brand is amazingly well known. The Apple TV is a digression of sorts, but it is a reasonable way to convince people it's safe to convert to digital media, because now not only can we take it with us, we can view on our nice TVs and listen on our quality A/V systems in our homes in places other than where our computers are. This is especially important with the popularity of laptops, as the last thing you want is your nice, light, portable MacBook wired seven ways to your home A/V system -- locked down more than any desktop computer not connect to a entertainment system.

Now we have the iPhone. It's cool, it's innovative, it's not just another smart-phone, but it comes closet to "just another" as anything Apple has made in a while. It's not only a new device with technology in it unfamiliar to Apple, but it also not only can use but depends upon service from a third party. That's unusual for Apple, as over the past few years they have more and more tried to make the Mac and the iPod require only the foundation of Apple services and products. You can use third-party solutions for these devices, but they only *require* Apple solutions.

So we have an iPod, an Apple TV, an iPhone, an iTunes Store to sell content for these devices -- all work the Mac but don't require the Mac -- and now we hear rumors of Apple founding, cooperating in or underwriting a record label (I don't think the music genre matters). It begins to look like Apple may be over-diversifying again, but this time branching out not just in different market segments, but entirely different markets. It begins to look like they want to become an all-device, all-media company. Sony is one such company and they're struggling with focus right now, and you have to remember they're a very different company with a very different history, a big part of that being that they originated in Japanese, where we know, say, Mitsubishi makes commercial and consumer vehicles, we may have been surprised to learn they make TVs too, but we're downright shocked to discover they made building materials, like cement, in another product group.

Here in the States, the best example of a formerly focused company trying to become an all-device, all-media company is Microsoft. And they've taken it on the chin a lot with that, and are really no farther towards achieving that goal than when set out on that path. Their Xbox 360 has sold fairly well, but they've missed their projected sales, they took a billion dollar loss to repair defective consoles, there are still complaints of innate defects in the console not addressed by the expanded repair program -- and all this on top of the fact the Xbox group, even excepting the billion dollar hit, has never made a penny; they've been losing money on this thing since the original Xbox model. Sony, an all-device, all-media company, made a ton of money on their games console business -- PlayStation and PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 remains to be seen. Nintendo has elected to just do games and they make money on their console business.

That's just an example of Microsoft trying to break into the games market, but they're trying to become a giant media conglomerate. It's not going that well. Really, with the same exception of some decent brand recognition with Xbox, they're still the Windows people.

If Apple wants to be an all-device, all-media company, and they pull it off, it could vault them into an entirely new realm of success as a business and innovator. It's no that if they succeed it would be a bad thing; it's that many of us longtime Apple customers sort of feel like we've been down this road before, at least a couple times, and when they finally hit the dead-end, the result was not good.

[janstett]

There's already a format called DVD Audio that has all the features you list.

Actually, there are two formats, and part of the reason they didn't catch on was because of the format war. Sounds a lot like Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, doesn't it?

DVD-Audio (DVD-A) is slightly different than DVD-Video. The main benefit is it uses a high-res lossless protocol (MLP) and can go as high as 5.1 channels and up to 192 kHz sampling rate, 24-bit samples. (For reference CD is 2 channels, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit samples). The other competitor was Sony/Philips' Super Audio CD (SACD) which used a different kind of lossless encoding altogether called Digital Stream Direct (DSD) and I never fully understood it.

In either case, hearing stereo music in high res opened my eyes. On top of that, I enjoy the optional 5.1 surround mixes as well when the original artist or producer is involved in the new mix.

Both formats are essentially dead. They tried to keep DVD-A alive with the Dual Disc (DVD-A on one side, CD on the other) and now MVI (Music Video Interactive, which has it mixed so a DVD-Video player can play it). The drawbacks?

- Format wars kill audiophile technology. When you're trying to convince people CD isn't good enough, you can't have two competing formats.
- While based on DVD neither format offerred any decent video features (my wife hates my DVD-A collection because you only get a photo slideshow while listening to music).

I enjoy the superior sound quality and I get a kick out of the optional 5.1 mixes too. However, most people don't listen to music in their 5.1 home theater room, they listen on their iPods. I always thought cars would be a perfect place for 5.1 surround, and aside from Acura including DVD-A in one of their cars around 2005, it has gone nowhere.

The problem audiophiles have with CD:

(1) The sampling rate of 44.1 kHz leaves some digital artifacting. Many wanted to go with 48 kHz sampling which renders the effect much less noticeable but Sony pushed 44.1 kHz so they could fit a certain symphony on a CD (that's why CDs are 74 minutes; with a slightly higher sampling rate they'd be slightly shorter).
(2) In general CD mixes have been compressed (not as in digital compression like MP3, but they've had their dynamic range compressed so highs aren't so high and lows aren't so low). This was a trend in radio at the time that carried over to CD, so music has more "presence" on crappy equipment and poor listening conditions. This also takes away range and subtlety from sound.

The two of the above are why audiophiles clung onto vinyl. Despite the hissing and popping, it left the full dynamic range intact and didn't destroy the mix with dynamic range compression. DVD-A and SACD came along too late.

[sanford]

Actually, there are two formats, and part of the reason they didn't catch on was because of the format war. Sounds a lot like Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, doesn't it?

Yeah, I know about both formats; I think I just mentioned the one because the original post mentioned something about transitioning audio to "DVD".

Reminds me of BD vs. HD DVD, but I think the difference is BD is going to manage to win that format war, although it will take longer to standardize because of the competing format.

I get the problems audiophiles have with non-algorithm-based compression on CD that didn't exist with analog formats. I think it's a valid point. But while audiophiles care, the masses won't convenience and portability. To most music consumers the sound of CDs is better because they don't pop, hiss, or have other obvious artifacts like vinyl, no matter the better frequency range of analog vinyl records. Then add turntable hum and such that is hard to combat without an expensive, high-end table, arm and cartridge installed and calibrated by some who knows what he's doing.

It's like music hobbyists prefer CDs, and that's most people serious about their music; you have to be both a music hobbyist and an audio-engineering hobbyist and a something of a technician to be an audiophile. There just aren't enough audiophiles to create a market. Split format just made it harder to create that market. Laser disc was vastly superior to consumer video tape of any format, was a single format -- Video Disc died so quickly -- and still it never caught on. You'd wonder why, but I think it was a simple as the players somewhat to very expensive for most of the time, and then the discs so large and you had to swap out discs and even flip discs on some players. People perceived them based on size and slight inconvenience as inferior to VHS. Laser disc was just starting to enter the rental market when DVD came along and wiped them out, even though MPEG-2 was more heavily compressed (algorithm based), etc. But they fit the CD form factor and by then people were so familiar with CDs, they embraced DVDs.

Forget to mention: If you have a local Fry's, they have an oddly large selection of DVD Audio and SACD, more the former than the latter, in case you ever just want to browse and don't have something specific you want to order online or something.

[jayducharme]

The other competitor was Sony/Philips' Super Audio CD (SACD) which used a different kind of lossless encoding altogether called Digital Stream Direct (DSD) and I never fully understood it.

The math is confusing but the sound is amazing. Both formats deliver eye-opening clarity. But as you imply, it's a shame few people will ever hear that clarity. I agree that both formats have gone nowhere. And I think for most people who aren't audiophiles (and who settle for the quality of MP3s), the better sound quality simply isn't enough of a temptation. Most people began buying CDs not for better sound quality, but because the recording industry began phasing out other options.

Sony pushed 44.1 kHz so they could fit a certain symphony on a CD (that's why CDs are 74 minutes; with a slightly higher sampling rate they'd be slightly shorter).

Legend has it that people from Sony and Phillips called none other than Leonard Bernstein and asked, "What's the longest symphony you've ever conducted?" To which Bernstein answered, "Mahler's Third." They asked him how long it lasted, and Bernstein told them, "Seventy-four minutes." (Of course, that was his interpretation of the symphony.) It was assumed because of their initial high cost that CDs would appeal only to wealthy audiophiles who, in the opinion of Sony and Phillips I guess, listened exclusively to classical music.

DVD-A and SACD came along too late.

Agreed. It's a shame, really.

[Blue Velvet]

Legend has it that people from Sony and Phillips called none other than Leonard Bernstein and asked, "What's the longest symphony you've ever conducted?" To which Bernstein answered, "Mahler's Third." They asked him how long it lasted, and Bernstein told them, "Seventy-four minutes."


Let's try and dispel that myth from none other than one of the Philips engineers... I think the myth has come about from marketing. ;)


The disk diameter is a very basic
parameter, because it relates to playing
time. All parameters then have to be
traded off to optimise playing time and
reliability. The decision was made by the
top brass of Philips. 'Compact Cassette
was a great success', they said, 'we don't think CD should be much larger'. As it was, we made CD 0.5 cm larger yielding
12 cm. (There were all sorts of stories
about it having something to do with the
length of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and
so on, but you should not believe them. In
the next section, playing time, we will give
more details.)

http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/cdstory.pdf

[Jacksteruk309]

If Apple starts a record label I hope it's not all crap.

Accept it, Jay-Z and Beyonce are crap.

Don't deny it.

[sanford]

The math is confusing but the sound is amazing. Both formats deliver eye-opening clarity. But as you imply, it's a shame few people will ever hear that clarity. I agree that both formats have gone nowhere. And I think for most people who aren't audiophiles (and who settle for the quality of MP3s), the better sound quality simply isn't enough of a temptation. Most people began buying CDs not for better sound quality, but because the recording industry began phasing out other options.



Legend has it that people from Sony and Phillips called none other than Leonard Bernstein and asked, "What's the longest symphony you've ever conducted?" To which Bernstein answered, "Mahler's Third." They asked him how long it lasted, and Bernstein told them, "Seventy-four minutes." (Of course, that was his interpretation of the symphony.) It was assumed because of their initial high cost that CDs would appeal only to wealthy audiophiles who, in the opinion of Sony and Phillips I guess, listened exclusively to classical music.



Agreed. It's a shame, really.

Or, whether or not the story is apocryphal or merely mythic, they thought classical recordings would run the longest of anything expected to fit on one disc. (Funny, I have a Bernstein recording of Mahler's First -- my favorite Mahler, actually -- and it runs quite a bit shorter. I swear I have the Third lose around here somewhere, but it's not on my Mac and it's not Bernstein. I have a Mehta recording of the Second and it actually runs 80 minutes -- but of course that's *Mehta's* interpretation. As an aside, why is Mahler's Ninth likely the least interesting of his symphonies but the most well-known and popular to entire generation? Is it all that one line of dialog in that movie "St. Elmo's Fire"? Just bizarre.)

I actually got a CD player in Christmas 1983 or Christmas 1984, when I was maybe a sophomore in high school; my parents paid an outrageous price for a Sony deck because I was such a music nut. I got that, and, I think, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and a selection of Bach fugues, but the one I definitely remember getting with the deck was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Dark Side of the Moon was definitely picked as an early release because it *did*, at least at first blush, seem to "sound better" or possess greater fidelity compact disc than LP -- don't even mention consumer cassette tape to me. It was and remains a great recording. Only later did I discover that the much hyped enhanced sound quality was questionable. But CDs were surely more portable and convenient.

I wouldn't even consider MP3 when we have AAC which is at any bit-rate superior in fidelity to MP3. But of course AAC is definitely a compromise, too. Thing is, I don't think most people perceive a quality difference between even a 128-bit AAC and the original CD recording. You could probably get them to hear it, but they don't just hear. At any rate, I used to be able to quite clearly hear the difference between CD and a good analog recording. But I have progressive hearing loss, and now have as much as 40% loss in both ears, worse at certain frequencies; thing is, I don't miss it because it's happened so slowly; it's hereditary and degenerative, not due to injury or infection. In its way, it's convenient -- except for the tinnitus, the high-pitched "ringing" in the ears, but that's thankfully improved by anticonvulsant medication I take for a seizure disorder (no, really, I'm not that big mess; these conditions are all merely moderate and overall just annoyances). I used to spend a fortune on audio equipment, and I'm still particular about appropriate power-ratings for the size of a room and speaker placement, etc., but my wife isn't attuned to these issues of audio fidelity, and I can't get hear the difference anymore, so I can get away with if not cheap equipment, at least just passable speakers and economical models of A/V receivers from quality manufacturers.

At any rate, I think the average music consumer has sort of a hearing loss like mine; theirs is not physical, but rather has more to do with how much attention they pay to the audio quality. Which I really can't fault because music is one of the few truly precious joys of life and is to be enjoyed, and if they enjoy it on any media, then that's good and vastly better for mankind than people who never learned to appreciate music at all.

[needthephone]

Yuck yuck yuck . Could they have picked two more crappy artists if they tried.

It won't matter what genre they choose. Rock,pop, rap , experimental neo garage n bass-big big mistake. Don't do this apple please. It wil be your undoing. Look at sony. It all went downhill when they tried to make their own content. I think sony are one of the most despised labels by many artists.OK they are still around but remember when sony had the same sort of cool cachet apple have now?

apple this will be the biggest mistake you ever make, please don't do this, it will all end in tears.

[jayducharme]

At any rate, I think the average music consumer has sort of a hearing loss like mine; theirs is not physical, but rather has more to do with how much attention they pay to the audio quality. Which I really can't fault because music is one of the few truly precious joys of life and is to be enjoyed, and if they enjoy it on any media, then that's good and vastly better for mankind than people who never learned to appreciate music at all.

That's so true. I too have pretty bad tinnitus and progressive hearing loss. I still do quite a bit of recording, but just for myself now. I no longer engineer for other people, because I just can't be sure what I'm hearing is what they're hearing. I've started thinking about Beethoven and how he wrote his ninth symphony when he was deaf. It amazes me that he could still "hear" all the instruments in his head and know how to combine them. His unique sound didn't change with the 9th but instead came to full fruition.

[Blue Velvet]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=3926946&postcount=329

;)