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Re: Competition would be welcome

Originally posted by Sol
I am glad Microsoft is going ahead with its subscription model because that leaves Apple with the superior alternative. The Apple Music Store is here today and it works great. The competition is still catching up.

We should not frown at the fact that all these companies want a piece of the music pie; after all, competition will surely drive down prices and improve the services available. Provided that all the music services offer the same content we the people buying the music would be the winners. If on the other hand the record companies tie themselves to one particular service then it would be back to square one for music downloads.

By the way, Roxio recently bought Napster and that would be one service worth looking out for when it is re-launched. I just hope Roxio does not shaft us Mac users like they do with the majority of their software.

what are you talking about you got TOAST from roxio and Jam and a bunch of other software from em.
 
Re: Competition would be welcome

Originally posted by Sol
I am glad Microsoft is going ahead with its subscription model because that leaves Apple with the superior alternative. The Apple Music Store is here today and it works great. The competition is still catching up.

We should not frown at the fact that all these companies want a piece of the music pie; after all, competition will surely drive down prices and improve the services available. Provided that all the music services offer the same content we the people buying the music would be the winners. If on the other hand the record companies tie themselves to one particular service then it would be back to square one for music downloads.

By the way, Roxio recently bought Napster and that would be one service worth looking out for when it is re-launched. I just hope Roxio does not shaft us Mac users like they do with the majority of their software.
Another affect could be to force Apple to continue to add to the service, both in features, as well as artists. Otherwise, Apple could end up doing what they have done in the past... innovate, then sit on it doing nothing new menawhile everyone else offers something better.

We shall see.
 
Re: Re: Competition would be welcome

Originally posted by yzedf
Another affect could be to force Apple to continue to add to the service, both in features, as well as artists. Otherwise, Apple could end up doing what they have done in the past... innovate, then sit on it doing nothing new menawhile everyone else offers something better.

We shall see.

Well, the nice thing about success is that everyone wants a piece of the pie (which is really what this article is about anyway). What that means is that smaller labels are banging on Apple's door trying to get in. Right now the format is the best. The only thing lacking is a complete collection of music but I think that will come with time.
 
Having the largest catalog and the least intrusive DRM is key. But in the end, it's going to come down to ownership. People will not want to rent music... period.
 
Re: Re: Competition would be welcome

Originally posted by yzedf
Another affect could be to force Apple to continue to add to the service, both in features, as well as artists. Otherwise, Apple could end up doing what they have done in the past... innovate, then sit on it doing nothing new menawhile everyone else offers something better.

We shall see.

thats true. competition is good for business. hopefully we'll see the windows iTMS release accelerated, aas well as some improvements to iTMS now (higher bitrate encoding, more songs, more complete albums, more exclusives)
 
Why I don't use the iTunes Music Store

Audio Compression: When you purchase music from the iTunes Music store, it is compressed in 128kbps AAC PROTECTED. This throws up a number of issues.

Firstly, there are many of us whom are anti-DRM to the extent that we wont use it. If you remove the DRM (using Toast) and then convert the uncompressed audio into regular 128kbps AAC Audio, then the sound quality is degraded, on most songs, to an extent that it is clearly audible (even to non-audiophiles). So... Either suffer with the DRM or suffer bad quality. I'll take neither, thanks.

The second issue is this... If you burn a CD, then reimport the music (as mentioned above), quality is degraded. Let's stop and think about the implications of this. What happens if you burn the music from the iTunes Music Store onto CD, your mac HD dies and you want to load the music back on. Well, bad luck. You're stuck with poor quality. What if you burn a CD for a friend... They can't put it onto their computer without losing quality as well. That's very limiting.

Thirdly, it's inevidable that a new audio codec will come out in the next few years that will do a much better job than AAC at the compression:quality ratio. Again, when you convert out of AAC into the new standard, you'll lose quality.

Considering that the iTunes Music Store sells music for sometimes marginally below, mostly above what a CD would cost you at Half.com to get the real CD.

It's impossible for Apple to address these issues and I don't hold them responsible for the recording industry's stupidity. These issues will affect all music services, not just Apples.

The freedom and flexibility I gain from purchasing actual CDs far outweighs the occasional meagre savings available at the iTunes Music Store.

(If you haven't checked out Half.com, you might want to. Very cool way to buy music.)
 
Originally posted by j763
Firstly, there are many of us whom are anti-DRM to the extent that we wont use it. If you remove the DRM (using Toast) and then convert the uncompressed audio into regular 128kbps AAC Audio, then the sound quality is degraded,
Well, I guess you will have to stick with buying CDs then. ITMS is made for convience.

What happens if you burn the music from the iTunes Music Store onto CD, your mac HD dies and you want to load the music back on. Well, bad luck.
You can easily make a data CD with the original AAC files. I know I have. Apple recommends doing this to prevent what you are worried about. So what if my HD dies, I can reinstall my OS, reauthorize my computer, reload my AAC files and I am good to go. There is the issue of the computer not being unauthorized and limiting me to only 2 computers. I am not sure how apple will deal with that. I only use one computer (PBG4) and won't worry about it until my second HD fails. I doubt it will happen.

Thirdly, it's inevidable that a new audio codec will come out in the next few years that will do a much better job than AAC at the compression:quality ratio. Again, when you convert out of AAC into the new standard, you'll lose quality.
When that happens, I am sure apple will support both the new standard and AAC. I can't imagine it will save much disk space over AAC. AAC is pretty damn good IMHO. Why reconvert the AAC into mpeg-5 or whatever. Disks are only getting larger and cheaper. Not a compelling arguement to me.

Considering that the iTunes Music Store sells music for sometimes marginally below, mostly above what a CD would cost you at Half.com to get the real CD.
Add shipping to that. I don't need anymore physical CDs. I have quite enough. They take up alot of space. Maybe ITMS is not for you. It certainly works for me.
 
Originally posted by ZildjianKX
I just wish they'd up the music quality in all these online music stores... if I'm going to pay for an AAC/MP3... I want it to be CD quality and then I can downsample it if I want it smaller...

With all these new plans popping up to have secure downloadable music... its going to end up that some standards get obsolete and your music will be worthless in a year or so. Just my $0.02.

Music quality has never been of any interest for the major music companies since the CDs came out. Today music is nothing else than any object that has to be sold as much as possible and then thrown away as soon as possible because the next piece has to be sold. It is not worth to move a finger for those people (maybe 0.000001 %) who are a little bit educated musicaly and can hear the difference between a natural sound and a computerized one.
Online music stores is just the next step of treating music as a junk object and to take more money out of people's pockets: eat and throwaway...
In this context it is funny to talk about music quality.
 
Partner With Amazon

What Apple should do is find a successful partnership arrangement with Amazon.

The reason is that Amazon is very successful at mainting a site with customer reviews, feedbacks, and affilliates. Amazon also has the capability to alternately allow a customer to purchase the music physically if they would like.

Apple's strength is providing the software that lets you access the store and purchase music in an integrated fashion.

If Apple does not find a strong industry partner, then they may get pushed out due to competition in the Windows arena. Whether this is Microsoft, Amazon, or simply a host of other third party offerings. By partnering with Amazon they have the opportunity to become the defacto standard and in such a way that Microsoft cannot leverage Apple out. This of course requires some long term arrangements with Amazon so they do not allow Microsoft to build software that directly interacts with the service and earn a percentage on the sales rather than Apple.

-Jeff

Jeff Thompson
CTO, CodeTek Studios, Inc.
 
i think that ideally Apple needs to partner with amazon, it is so win win its disgusting.

remember when cdnow was cdnow, and not amazon, having previews of every single song on most albums, and now they don't do that when amazon bought them, Apple could fill in this hole, and Amazon (cdnow) could use aac (quicktime for windows) for the 30 second previews. Or when someone visits the ITMS if they don't like the encoding quality, there is an option to buy the album from Amazon.

win....win
 
I am not so sure Apple should partner with Amazon. Apple has the partnership deals with the studios. Why share it with Amazon and lower their take? Windows users still need a way to play protected content. The studios are not going to let Apple or anyone do anything with the music, if it does not protect their interests. That is why Apple is working on iTunes for Windows. Once that is released, there is no need to partner with Amazon.

Amazon might win with an Apple partnership, but in reality, they will probably do better with a relationship with MS who would love for Amazon to sell products that only work with their media player.

Apple needs to release iTunes for Windows in the next four or five months. If it does, it has a chance to do pretty damn well.
 
Originally posted by Falleron
I just wish that Apple had the windows version of iTunes out. Its always the same. Apple comes up with something cool + other people make the money out of it!

You're so right! Let's hope that the Windows version will be out by Summers end. I'm so tired of hearing about the PC world from fellow colleagues. They have little idea of the crap they really work with.
 
I think Apple already has some sort of deal with Amazon...since the "1-Click" term they use in iTMS is Amazon's trademark (Says so in the "About iTunes" window)
 
Come on Apple, HURRY HURRY HURRY. Maybe we will know about when it will be ready at WWDC. Or maybe Apple could even release it for Windows or go International with it at WWDC. God I only hope. But maybe Apple will start to see how many Companies are on there trail and speed up the porting.
 
Originally posted by coolsoldier
I think Apple already has some sort of deal with Amazon...since the "1-Click" term they use in iTMS is Amazon's trademark (Says so in the "About iTunes" window)
Yeah, I remember reading about the whole 1-Click 'technology' a few years ago.
 
Originally posted by NavyIntel007
Come on people, Microsoft is like the Catholic Church in that they are totally out of touch with people.
Watch it. There are Catholics on this board, thank you very much. Make your comparisons with something else.
 
Re: Partner With Amazon

Originally posted by jwthomp
What Apple should do is find a successful partnership arrangement with Amazon.

Who do you think Apple is licensing One-Click from?

Unfortunately, you might see the song availability from iTMS diminish as the labels try to follow Apples lead on using a successful combination of business models, to have everything fall apart again.

I see AOL doing this, with Warner content (I think they are out of bed with BMG, but that was openly available to them) to help AOL subscriptions. (Hey, don't you need a dot mac account for the iTMS? or at least an apple account)

And I see Microsoft doing this, to tie people into their particular media player schemes.

But it really falls apart for any of them if content, available choices, become limited to one label over another. People don't go to a record store to get a force fed selection from one label, they want choice.
 
Music quality has never been of any interest for the major music companies since the CDs came out. Today music is nothing else than any object that has to be sold as much as possible and then thrown away as soon as possible because the next piece has to be sold. It is not worth to move a finger for those people (maybe 0.000001 %) who are a little bit educated musicaly and can hear the difference between a natural sound and a computerized one.
Online music stores is just the next step of treating music as a junk object and to take more money out of people's pockets: eat and throwaway...
In this context it is funny to talk about music quality.


I could not have said it better myself.:)
 
If Apple gets the windows version of iTunes out before Microsoft has a music store then they should be okay. If Microsoft gets a music store out before Apple gets iTunes ported to Windows, the Apple store will be out of business within days. Microsoft is VERY persuasive in new markets and they WILL get their way.
 
Originally posted by j763
Why I don't use the iTunes Music Store

Audio Compression: When you purchase music from the iTunes Music store, it is compressed in 128kbps AAC PROTECTED. This throws up a number of issues.
Firstly, there are many of us whom are anti-DRM to the extent that we wont use it. What if you burn a CD for a friend... [snip]They can't put it onto their computer without losing quality as well. That's very limiting.

Well, the whole point of DRM is to stop you doing the latter because it is illegal.

If people didn't "burn copies for friends"
then we wouldn't have to suffer DRM.

You bring it on yourself.
 
I was just listening to TechLive on TechTV and they were talking about how Roxio had Napster and Pressplay. I think there service could be the biggest competition because EVERYONE knows what napster was and if it comes back they will be more familiar with it so they will probably give it a go. But it's supposed to be coming out sometime around next march which would give apple a few months release advance to get a Windows user base. Hopefully PC user's wont' be like they are with Apple Computers and automatically think ohh it's made by Apple so it's trash and can't do anything. And Apple will have to step up it's ad campaign, I've seen a whopping ONE Apple iTMS ad. They should do like DELL where everytime a program goes to commericals you almost always see one.
 
Here's something that no one has brought up:

There is a lot more than other companies coming out with a competative product like Apple's music store. They also have to make a peice of software that is as easy as itunes. This is what's going to set Apple apart.

Nice and easy to understand interface, real easy CD burn, super easy upload to ipod (who knows how easy they'll make it for other mp3 players), etc.

Other companies don't have this. It will be a big deal when your friend is having a hard time understanding how to download, burn or sync to an ipod with other software. I think Apple has this in the bag for many years to come.
 
The other competitors listed in the first post didn't actually say that they were going to go with a subscription service in the future, did they? So if they want to compete with Apple in the "per-song" download business, won't they need an agreement with all 5 major record companies as well, much like Steve Jobs needed to fight for? If so, then won't it be a long process for them to get all of that worked out? Maybe by the time these companies work out a deal with the music companies, iTunes for Windows would have been out for a long enough time to gain market share early.

And anyway, since it was SJ who proved to the record companies that this would work (and it has thus far), SJ has probably earned the trust, respect, and admiration of all the big-wigs at the record companies. SJ promised, and delivered. Maybe the record companies won't make it as easy for the other companies to leech off SJ's success. These other companies can't sell songs in the "exact" same manner as Apple. They probably need to propose an idea to music execs as to why their idea is different, better, and safer than Apple's, which they may not be able to do immediately.
 
Re: Partner With Amazon

Originally posted by jwthomp
What Apple should do is find a successful partnership arrangement with Amazon.

The reason is that Amazon is very successful at mainting a site with customer reviews, feedbacks, and affilliates. Amazon also has the capability to alternately allow a customer to purchase the music physically if they would like.

Apple's strength is providing the software that lets you access the store and purchase music in an integrated fashion.

If Apple does not find a strong industry partner, then they may get pushed out due to competition in the Windows arena. Whether this is Microsoft, Amazon, or simply a host of other third party offerings. By partnering with Amazon they have the opportunity to become the defacto standard and in such a way that Microsoft cannot leverage Apple out. This of course requires some long term arrangements with Amazon so they do not allow Microsoft to build software that directly interacts with the service and earn a percentage on the sales rather than Apple.

-Jeff

Jeff Thompson
CTO, CodeTek Studios, Inc.

No offense, but I fail to see how this makes any sense for either party. Apple has the storefront and distribution system set up and in place (or will, in the case of the Windows version of itms). What, exactly, do they then gain by partnering with Amazon?

Amazon is a company who's strengths include providing a storefront (for their own offerings or the various other stores (target, toys 'r us, etc.), and managing a distribution system. Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like the work Apple has already done.

The only way I can see Apple partnering with Amazon is if Jobs decided he wanted to take advantage of all those customer eyeballs. However, given the likely slim(ish) margins of the music download business, I can't really see Apple wanting to split the money, especially if they aren't taking advantage of any of Amazon's strengths (aside from the storefront, which, minor digression, is looking crappier and crappier as time goes on), or using Amazon's servers to host downloads, which is exceedingly unlikely, as Amazon uses various outside services (loudeye, I believe does some of it, but I'd bet there're others, too) to host their song previews.

In other words, it doesn't make any business sense, at least insofar as hosting the itms in the windows world, which is what the post -- nonsensically -- implies. Now, if Apple wanted to grant the option to buy a cd off Amazon from within the music store, that's a little different, and I don't see any real reason why not, except that Apple would likely gain too little revenue to make up for technical process of syncing up the catalog, let alone the transactions.
 
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