2A Batterie said:
just fear that eventually Apple is going to shoot itself in the foot by not budging on such issues as pricing nd compatibility. I also think that record companies are getting a bit fed up with Apple's stubborn attitude.
1. Apple is attempting to keep switching costs as high as possible so that people are locked in. If you have a $99 iPod shuffle, but have $990 (0r $495 or $99 or ...) of iTunes songs that you've purchased you are probably going to buy another iPod when drop the shuffle too many times or whatever. Eventually the hardware will become (for many people, not just those of us who are here) the less valuable part of the equation. I now have 15234 items (songs, audio books etc) in my iTunes library (all legal, most from older CD that my parents had and ones I had) and so the cost of the iPod itself is negligible in comparison to the cost of the music.
Allowing the songs to be played elsewhere would hurt this goal. Later, once the market has matured, they will be able to *judiciously* license to others. Until then, their logic is that they need to keep it closed until they have control on the consumer side, which means control on the record company side. To get the recording industry to change, there needs to be a big player to challenge them.
2. I think increasing prices would be a bad idea for the same reason - you want people to get as much as possible. I believe that was the intent behind the "free music <whatever day>" - get people to download iTunes and get a free song meaning that no matter what, if you buy a non-iPod player you will have to throw out some music. Psychologically not what people want to do.
3. For me, I'll buy CDs if they are pretty close in price to the version on iTunes. If I only want one song from the CD, then I'd do iTunes, otherwise the CD. The problem is that on most CDs there are 2 or 3 songs (at most) that you want. Once the recording industry sees that people usually buy CDs for just a few songs, it will have to change.
4. The CD model is essentially - buy this one (or 2 or 3) song on CD for $11.99 and get the rest of the songs for free. iTunes says - buy this one song for $0.99 and don't get the rest of the songs. That is the key analysis of the difference in economics of the two. It is a LOT easier to just spend $0.99 on one song on a whim than $11.99 on a whim.
The conclusion is that digital downloads have NOT plateaud or anything close too it. The so-called analysis that argues that is as wrong as the ones who thought the VCR would kill TV and movies and...
You'll get a lot more people to buy singles when it is easy and quick and people don't have to worry about losing their music. Other arguments ignore history and ignore human behaviour.
These are the same group who said things like "It's going to be the biggest bust of all time" - Jack Warner of Warner Bros Studios prior to the Dec 1939 release of Gone With The Wind.
