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Apple/EMI Press Conference Coverage

chrisgeleven said:
Where are you getting that? Assuming you bought 57 songs (since 57.87 is roughly that), 57 * 0.30 = $17.10 to upgrade your iTunes music.
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He's assuming, rightly or wrongly, that for those songs he acquired at a discount due to an album purchase, he'd have to do individual upgrades of each song instead of album-wide upgrades.

As to whether or not there will be an album-wide upgrade option, I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm not bitching about this for a couple of reasons...

1. Cassette singles back in the day cost $1.49 to $3.49, and they were crap.

2. Most retailers didn't give you any option whatsoever to "upgrade" your used CD's/tapes... I'm excluding Music-Go-Round from this but I can't remember what, if any, discount they gave you toward brand new unopened CD's.... and even if they did there was no option to upgrade, much less buy new, only some of the songs on any album.
 
Avatar74 said:
Or I wonder if this is a dubious analogy since it's a marketing statement published by a manufacturer, the veracity of which is debatable... whereas AES' statement was published by AES which is a standards-establishing organization that scrutinizes all aspects of audio engineering in the same way that technical papers are published by SMPTE today which will decide the future standards for digital theatrical projection.
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For all we know: A group of tone-deaf old fart "engineers" decided that a "standard" (that they wished to make a "standard") is "indistinguishable"...

Big woop! :p
 
Peace said:
This is a good deal for all involved.But the more important thing is the other music companies are going to be peer-pressured into following suit..

In the long run this is great.
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Absolutely. Record companies are already realizing the failure of the "sue every grandmother and 12 year old" model, and they're finally waking up to the inevitability of internet music distribution and the kind of unique premiums they're going to have to employ to keep people interested... e.g. upgrading songs, completing albums, buying tracks a-la carte, etc.

The timing couldn't be more perfect:

1. Record executives are starting to seriously consider abolishing DRM.

2. Technological convergence is expanding the use of digital downloads in the home and on the go.

3. iPod as a product is hitting the maturity phase of its cycle. In order to boost the next generation of devices, e.g. iPhone, Mobile Mac, AppleTV, there needs to be some supplemental interoperability with non-Apple hardware. This adds value to all these products... who knows, it might even make Zune not entirely worthless!
 
Ahhhh vinyl on my Rega.
 

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Avatar74 said:
There are label compensation issues... they may view part of the premium as a means of offsetting their concerns about piracy. Note I said "offsetting their concerns" not "offsetting piracy"... because losses due to piracy are not accurately estimable.
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I wonder if measurements can be made to get a useful approximation of the change in music piracy over the next months, to gauge what effect this change makes when it goes into effect.
 
Avatar74 said:
Quantization error can occur in any digital system... CD Audio is prone to quantization error.

If an amplitude change between two given quantization intervals falls below the least significant bit ...
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Excellent summary of digital audio systems! You crammed a lot in that relatively short post. It took me an entire semester in school just to understand how it all works. I still can't believe it works at all because there is so much error correction involved.

I'd like to add that I, too, would love to see the default music format have a much higher dynamic range (at least AC-3).
 
Now please release them via apple lossless :p

DRM is just dumb and can and will allways be crackable. When I download from iTunes it's because I find convenient,fast,I can't find the album.
 
UK people - Channel 506 on Sky - CNN are about to show an interview with Jobs on this
 
I'd like to give Apple some "props" for allowing me to upgrade the songs, at the price as if I was orginally buying them. I can buy all the EMI music, full of DRM , and come may get rid of it for the same price as if I had been weighting the whole time!
 
This just cements that Apple owning the online digital music business for the next 3 years. Why do I have a feeling that there might be some "problems" when an iTunes song tries is work with a Zune. Right back at ya, Microsoft!! :p

Remember all those debates about how third party software companies were one step behind trying to compete against MS Office products on Windows. Here we go again except this time Apple is calling the shots instead of Microsoft. Apple has come so far since Steve took over 10 years ago.
 
EricNau said:
I have spent a total of $57.87 on iTunes music, but since most are albums, I'll have to pay $33.60 to upgrade every song.

So if this is the case, I have to pay over 50% of the original price to upgrade my songs - seems a little high, doesn't it?
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Isn't it actually the case that 20+ track albums were sold to you at a remarkable discount? If you paid less than 50 cents per song on average in your collection, you saved 50% or more thanks to album discounts. Even with the payment to upgrade, you've still saved ~25% over the old per-track pricing, and compared to the $1.29 per track price, saved something on the order of 40%.

Any way you slice it, you still come out on top. The discount is just smaller. And I'd imagine that there are a number of those songs you wouldn't care to upgrade, reducing your theoretical $30 payment.

In other words, you bought ~120 tracks for $57 (instead of $118). The value of those "premium" tracks is $155. $90 is still a bargain.
 
dXTC said:
The Mellotron was not exactly a synthesizer in the sense of oscillators, filters, and the like. It contained an array of magnetic tapes, one for each note on the keyboard; it would start playing back upon the keyboardist's pressing a key, and spring back to the starting position upon release. Thus, it's closer to an "analog sampler" rather than a synth.

Because of the multitude of tapes and tape playback systems inside, the unit was extremely heavy and prone to breakdown. However, it was used by the Moody Blues and others to provide faithful re-creations of flutes, string sections, and choir sounds in the studio and (occasionally) on the road.
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And used for the beginng of Strawberry Fields Forever..
 
256K AAC DRM-FREE album same price as 128K AAC DRM Album


Phew - there I said it in words as clear as it can be...it was mentioned earlier but it got lost in the moment...

now that's MORE...:)
 
Great news.

Here's what I don't like. I don't like announcements this far in advance. I know this particular thing isn't all Apple, but it used to be you could get whatever was being announced right after it was announced. Now it's anywhere from 1-6 months in the future. Just wait to announce it!
 
I like this upgrading policy. Very awesome.

On the downside, now I have to rerip all my CDs. I used 192kbps AAC, and I can't have my iTunes purchases in higher quality than my own songs. :p
 
slffl said:
I know this particular thing isn't all Apple, but it used to be you could get whatever was being announced right after it was announced.
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Apple did that kind of thing all along, they used to try harder to disguise it though. One of their recurring gimmicks is to take orders for products that don't ship until weeks or months later.
 
slffl said:
Great news.

Here's what I don't like. I don't like announcements this far in advance. I know this particular thing isn't all Apple, but it used to be you could get whatever was being announced right after it was announced. Now it's anywhere from 1-6 months in the future. Just wait to announce it!
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I think we should get used to it...

Intel transition.

Apple TV.

iPhone.

This.

Whatever the reason, it's not about secrets as much as it was in the past.
 
I personally think this is a rip-off......They should keep the 99 cents for premium and lower it for regular...99 cents is too much for regular songs as it is...
 
I guess all the work Microsoft put into their own online store just got rendered almost useless based on this event. Let's see I could own a song and play it on the Zune or I could buy it and play it on a Zune and an iPod or almost any other device. Hmmm...

Okay, okay, I'm being a little dramatic, but it's so tempting to bask in self proclaimed glory every once in awhile. :D
 
matticus008 said:
Isn't it actually the case that 20+ track albums were sold to you at a remarkable discount? If you paid less than 50 cents per song on average in your collection, you saved 50% or more thanks to album discounts. Even with the payment to upgrade, you've still saved ~25% over the old per-track pricing, and compared to the $1.29 per track price, saved something on the order of 40%.

Any way you slice it, you still come out on top. The discount is just smaller. And I'd imagine that there are a number of those songs you wouldn't care to upgrade, reducing your theoretical $30 payment.

In other words, you bought ~120 tracks for $57 (instead of $118). The value of those "premium" tracks is $155. $90 is still a bargain.
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I usually think of it the other way. The album price is the normal price (albums in the store are often priced around $9.99 as well), and you're paying a premium when purchasing songs individually (although still saving money if you only want 1 or 2 songs).

At least in my case, many of the songs were meant to be part of an album (some songs are only 1 to 2 minutes long), so treating each song individually isn't entirely fair.
 
Q: It's a pretty radical step, Eric. How did you reach the decision to do it? Was it Steve Jobs' letter that convinced you? Was it the internal surveys you've done? What was the moment in which you said, "Damn it, we're gonna go DRM-free?" And will the extra sales be enough to compensate for the declining physical sales?

A: We've always known Steve's view on the subject, long before his open letter.


:D my favourite CEO
 
One thing I'm surprised to not find more discussion of: Albums. I had to read the EMI press release to figure out that albums will be high bit rate and DRM free, at the same price. To the many arguments of "if you want that, buy a CD", this is actually a great counter- generally less expensive, certainly more convenient, and much closer in quality to the origional, if you buy the album on itunes. I think this is the big step forward. Also, I think this is the music industry's response to the decline in album sales/rise of less profitable singles- make more profit on singles while encouraging sales of albums by giving them more value for the same price.

One thing i couldn't figure out- they said upgrade at 30 cents a song, but what about albums purchased before this announcment. free upgrade, or pay by the song, or no upgrade at all?

Here's the other big question: what about indies? is this EMI exclusive, or can anybody who wants it go DRM free?
 
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