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Apple Now Number #1 Music Retailer
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I seriously need to buy some Apple stock before it goes through the roof.
I'd hurry. Jumped almost 5 bucks today.
I understand that record companies have issues with Apple since they most likely want a bigger cut of the profits. They obviously have the right to do what they like or provide Apple with what they want. However, this is quite the sticky issue when you're dealing with one of the top music providers who,well, do a way better job in the digital aspect of music sales than the record companies themselves. The iTunes store is doing well for a reason. Hell, Apple even promotes artists better than record companies at times. Look at all those crazy songs in their ads that have become huge simply from commercial exposure. There is no denying that Apple has become quite infuential in the music industry which pisses record companies off because of the perceived or actual loss of control of their industry. I'm happy at how Apple has exposed me to a whole new way of buying and enjoying my music. Regardless of how labels have issues with Apple, I do not appreciate being caught in the middle. Obviously, Apple needs to make some money for their service but I still feel that they are quite customer focussed when it comes to pricing. I'm sorry, but I refuse to pay more for a track because it happens to be a bigger hit at the time. To me, a song is a song. I'm sure the issue isn't Apple refusing to price certain tracks lower. They know a lot of us don't wanna pay crazy prices for songs that the labels decide should be higher just because. I don't know what all the issues are and yeah, a monopoly isn't a good thing, but to prevent higher quality tracks from being sold on iTunes while being available on other stores frustrates me. I have chosen iTunes as my main provider of music and will not change my mind. It is the choice I've made as a consumer and let the labels know that I will only buy music if it is available on my iTunes store. Otherwise, I'm not buying it period!!! There are many other ways of finding what we want as we all know.
You can still buy your tracks, they'll just be low bit rate and have DRM. It's your choice to use iTunes so those are the conditions you're currently going to have to live with.
I could have written this. These days, I tend to use the iTunes store to sample stuff, and I proceed to buy stuff I like either from a local record store (used CDs are top notch there, with a good selection and good prices) or get it from Amazon.
99 cents / song is "pitifully" low??!!
Try absurdly high more like! Apple is absolutely right to stand their ground on this point. They should be driving the price even lower. It should have been 50 cents / song or even less. Given that the incremental cost for iTMS to sell an additional copy of a song is very nearly zero, if cutting the price in half doubled the number of sales you would make the same money. Conversely, if doubling the price cut the number of sales in half, you would make the same money.
And I can promise you that if the price were 50 cents I would buy far more than twice as much as I do, but if the price were increased even less than double I would buy far less than half as much.
iTMS has established the going rate (99 cents) and the packaging model (singles rather than albums) for music and there is no going back. The artists, music labels, etc. are just going to have to learn to get by with slightly less extravagant incomes. In fact, the music publishing companies should count themselves lucky they even continue to exist at all; with the ability to equip a recording studio for a few thousand dollars that amateurs can do more with than the most expensive professional studios of a few years ago and the ability to get music for sale before a world wide audience for essentially zero production and distribution cost, I don't understand what useful function the record labels even perform anymore. Guess they just have to all cut back on their nose candy budgets.
I couldn't care less what they feel, all they are going to get from me is 99 cents / track and they should count themselves lucky to get that. Before iTMS they didn't get anything from me as I had pretty much quit buying music. (No more $16 CD's that are 80% filler.) If the music industry is smart, they will thank Steve for saving themselves from their own foolish greed.
This is the music industry's own fault. All the biggest artists these days release albums with only one or two good songs, which become singles, and that's all the public ever cares about. The music industry as a whole has abandoned the album as a form of artistic expression in favor of pursuing #1 single. If more artists released albums that were compelling as a whole, this wouldn't be a problem at all.
There are tons of smaller bands that are still releasing quality albums where all the songs are good, and whose fans will always buy the whole album (sometimes even several times!) to support the band. The big industry needs to take a hint from the indie labels. If they're worried about people buying one or two songs instead of the whole album, maybe they should start releasing better albums.
Well, there's a way around that problem, and that's just to stick with older stuff, made before things went downhill in general. Of course, I'm new to music in general, so there's still a lot of stuff for me to buy from the 1960s and 1970s, along with the better stuff from more recent times.
I'm an album completionist, and it's either the entire album or nothing for me most of the time.
dude, you do realise that the vast majority of artists are not exactly on "extravagant incomes" yeah?. I couldn't care less about the big labels but independent artists deserve every penny they get. As for the music, they can't focus group their songs - they don't even *know* which ones are going to be "hits" and what is going to get trashed as "filler". You might buy more than twice as much music at 50c a pop but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the norm. Devaluing the music is the best way to kill originality.
Yall are all funny. No, one download does not equal one album sale. If this had been microsoft surpasses wal-mart if you count one download = 1 album sale, you would all have jumped on it. What are you all smoking?. Apple is a pretty significant player in the market... probably even more than walmart but you jumping up and down at an invalid comparison?.
Well, I just had to read up a bit about European competition law. If this was in Europe, and a record company sells DRM-less music through Amazon and refuses to allow Apple to sell DRM-less music, then they could be in for a very, very bad surprise.
This whole story is based on an internal memo at Apple which was leaked, so Apple can claim whatever they like. However, in last months serious news that Apple was #2, they counted 1 album = 10 songs to allow for reasonable comparisons.
I have little sympathy for the Music Industry. Before iTunes, everyone I know was schooled by Shawn Fanning in the ways of amassing gigs of music. P2P was the way, and we all steered clear of the legit sites ... until iTunes.
iTunes, although not the first legal download site, was the easiest to navigate and implemented the least confusing purchasing plan. It really helped the music industry that at the time was clueless as to how to make money in a shifting market.
I am for competition and happy that Amazon and others give us a choice. However, the music industry does not only treat most of their artists poorly but also the consumer whenever they have the chance. Example: Remember the cost of your first CD in the mid 80's? Now think back to the cost of the same CD in the mid 90's. Big price change as the technology became cheaper? No. Price stayed the same until it was already too late and we were DL addicted.
The music industry loves to think short term. Too bad for us. The music industry giving other outlets an unfair edge in order to punish Apple is just business as usual.
We all know how to get music free. That there is a discussion on this thread of who to buy from is because of what iTunes did for the industry.
iTunes, although not the first legal download site, was the easiest to navigate and implemented the least confusing purchasing plan. It really helped the music industry that at the time was clueless as to how to make money in a shifting market.
I am for competition and happy that Amazon and others give us a choice. However, the music industry does not only treat most of their artists poorly but also the consumer whenever they have the chance. Example: Remember the cost of your first CD in the mid 80's? Now think back to the cost of the same CD in the mid 90's. Big price change as the technology became cheaper? No. Price stayed the same until it was already too late and we were DL addicted.
The music industry loves to think short term. Too bad for us. The music industry giving other outlets an unfair edge in order to punish Apple is just business as usual.
We all know how to get music free. That there is a discussion on this thread of who to buy from is because of what iTunes did for the industry.