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Jimmy Iovine to Apple: 'You Have a Hole in Music Right Now; Let Me Plug It'

The funny thing is that when the iTMS came out it had some really great curated lists—but they were sort of sporadically placed and a bit clumsy to use. And whoever picked theirs songs of the week was good, too.

Spotify has gotten a much better Browse section with curated lists now. I can't see going back to iTunes now. I only use it for podcasts.
 
Furthermore, I'd like to see what happens with Taylor Swift (don't care for her as an artist, she's more of a puppet).

I don't buy her story about Spotify and therefore pulling her music from the service.

Taylor Swift's label is distributed by Universal, a company Iovine used to help run.

Something is up. I bet her music will be on Apple's new service.
 
Someone tell me…

…how streaming ever benefits anyone beside the operator of the streaming service?

Seems like it's just another scheme to wrap advertising/clicks/loyalty around "free" content. 75% of Spotify users currently listen for free.

Remember back when P2P was stealing from the industry and El Jobso said something like "The only way to beat free is to make the experience better than free?".

What happens when actually paying gets in the way of the experience?

Apple appears to be negotiating the payouts down to undercut the already low subscriptions pricing at the various streaming services. While Apple may win with this approach to try and starve the others out of business using their near-monopoly music position, the ultimate losers will be music makers.

And then everybody loses.
 
Bring us a better iPod than the iPod Classic! Enough with this streaming mess...
 
Razeus said:
Furthermore, I'd like to see what happens with Taylor Swift (don't care for her as an artist, she's more of a puppet).

I don't buy her story about Spotify and therefore pulling her music from the service.

Taylor Swift's label is distributed by Universal, a company Iovine used to help run.

Something is up. I bet her music will be on Apple's new service.
Click to expand...

Imagine if Apple does unveil this new Beats branding at the Grammy awards, and Taylor Swift is a part of it. It will all make sense.. Although it is probably unlikely something like this would be played out in the public eye for months before unveiling.
 
bandalay said:
…how streaming ever benefits anyone beside the operator of the streaming service?
Click to expand...

I pay $10/month to Spotify to have a virtually unlimited music collection that I can play online or offline on several devices, through multiple zones in my house, etc.

Seems like a pretty good deal. So I guess it benefits me too.
 
WrQth said:
Plug a whole in music? Streaming perhaps but Apple has iRadio, how is Beats streaming service which only holds a small percentage of the market going to help there?
Click to expand...

Issue is there is a whole generation out there that considers the iPod and iTunes and "old" technology and not with the current pop music scene. Music per revenue model is a youth market with 80% of the sales going to those 18 to 35 years of age. Beats came up with a brand and marketing strategy that hits the lower end of that demographic. Apple will get their money back within two years of their purchase of Beats.
 
zhenya said:
I hope Apple does something worthwhile with Beats without ruining a good base.

As a Beats, Spotify, and Pandora user, I think Beats actually has the best product in some ways, but their apps are buggy - on iOS and on the web browser, and their entire product has been ignored since Apple acquired it.
Click to expand...

I agree that Beats has the best user experience of the major players. I tried them all in parallel for a week and then decided.

I'm not surprised that the app and web player haven't gotten any love since the acquisition. Clearly Apple is focusing resources on the integration rather than patching something that will be going away shortly.

----------
Razeus said:
I think the biggest problem with iTunes is:

Unless I'm on an Apple device, I can't access the damn thing.

Why is it that the "best albums" list are rolling out on blogs, yet no links for me to go iTunes?

Why can't I purchase a concert ticket for an artist I like that's coming to town?

Why do I always have to go elsewhere to find more about an artist/band?

Why is the UI on desktop and iOS so convoluted?

Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?

But I digress.
iTunes is not about music. It's about "give us your money and get out!
Click to expand...

We're on the same page. I wrote about this recently:

People want more than just the music, however. Music videos, lyrics, behind the scenes content, concert tickets, tablature, and cover songs are content that many listeners regularly seek and enjoy. Today, most of these content types are spread across the web, linked together only by a Google search or two.

Looking for a music video? Go to YouTube.
What is she saying in the second verse? Go to a shady lyrics site.
Want to see if that band is coming to your town? Go to TicketMaster.
Want to learn how to play the song on your guitar? Go to a tablature website.

How great would it be if all of this was part of Apple's music service? What if you could click to expand an artist, album, or track to view all of the relevant content in-line without leaving the app? Imagine clicking on the details of a song to reveal a "Learn to Play in GarageBand" link that opens the application and presents the user with the tablature for their instrument and backing tracks. That's cool.

I can dream about this stuff all day long, but the point is that there is so much more that Apple could do to create a complete, one-stop experience. Doing so would solve a problem and make me more likely to stick around longer - both things that lead to more money for Apple in the long-run.

- Apple's Next Generation Music Service
Click to expand...
 
Razeus said:
I think the biggest problem with iTunes is:

Unless I'm on an Apple device, I can't access the damn thing.
Click to expand...

You can't access Itunes on a non-apple laptop/desktop ?

or are you talking about mobile ? in the case of phones there's really no huge benefit to Apple porting over Itunes to competing smartphones. They make most their money in hardware and therefore decisions of what they do with software are based around that.

You can all it selfish, greedy, or whatever but all companies make decisions like this.

Razeus said:
Why is it that the "best albums" list are rolling out on blogs, yet no links for me to go iTunes?
Click to expand...

I dont really understand what you're saying here, is it that blogs dont post links with their "best albums" list to ITunes ? wouldn't that be the fault of whoever runs the blog and not Apple ?

Razeus said:
Why can't I purchase a concert ticket for an artist I like that's coming to town?
Click to expand...

Is apple gonna get a cut of concert profits ? probably not, so why do extra work for someone else who's not paying you ?

Razeus said:
Why do I always have to go elsewhere to find more about an artist/band?
Click to expand...

Itunes has artist pages with their bio, origin, birth date, genre, picture gallery, etc. What more do you want ?

Razeus said:
Why is the UI on desktop and iOS so convoluted?
Click to expand...

Doesn't really seem that way to me or at least not enough to bother me. Can it be done better ? sure , most things can , but it's not a substantial annoyance to me at least. So I dont know what to say.

Razeus said:
Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?
Click to expand...

I understand what you're saying here. It's hard for you to accurately go to EXACTLY where you want but that's the limitation of trying to vertically place the entire alphabet on the screen. I think the main focus is just to allow you to at least go REMOTELY where you pick and then use your main screen to scroll to your final selection.
 
bandalay said:
…how streaming ever benefits anyone beside the operator of the streaming service?

Seems like it's just another scheme to wrap advertising/clicks/loyalty around "free" content. 75% of Spotify users currently listen for free.

Remember back when P2P was stealing from the industry and El Jobso said something like "The only way to beat free is to make the experience better than free?".

What happens when actually paying gets in the way of the experience?

Apple appears to be negotiating the payouts down to undercut the already low subscriptions pricing at the various streaming services. While Apple may win with this approach to try and starve the others out of business using their near-monopoly music position, the ultimate losers will be music makers.

And then everybody loses.
Click to expand...

It certainly benefits consumers in the short term as it is now easy to subscribe to a vast library of music for far less than anyone who had more than a passing interest in music would have spent in years past.

Perhaps the royalty rates need to be ironed out, but this is undeniably the future of music. The entrenched interests have not helped themselves one iota by ignoring this for going on 15 years now.

Further, the big thing I think that is missed, even in today's conversation, is that revenue tends to be compared on a short-term basis. Yes, the revenue from streaming seems puny when compared to an album sale this year. However, people who buy albums, at least good ones, tend to listen to that same album for what, 10 or 20 years? What do the streaming revenues look like when aggregated over that time period of someone listening thousands of times over decades? From my back of the napkin calculations, it's got to be pretty close to what they were making from physical sales.
 
bandalay said:
…how streaming ever benefits anyone beside the operator of the streaming service?

Seems like it's just another scheme to wrap advertising/clicks/loyalty around "free" content. 75% of Spotify users currently listen for free.

Remember back when P2P was stealing from the industry and El Jobso said something like "The only way to beat free is to make the experience better than free?".

What happens when actually paying gets in the way of the experience?

Apple appears to be negotiating the payouts down to undercut the already low subscriptions pricing at the various streaming services. While Apple may win with this approach to try and starve the others out of business using their near-monopoly music position, the ultimate losers will be music makers.

And then everybody loses.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you've taken a few too many hits from the bong this afternoon.

$9.99 per month is not a "low" subscription price, especially when all of the content offered on the streaming sites is available for free via P2P.

I understand that you want to turn the clock back and return to 1987, but that's not happening. Digital content can be recreated infinitely and sent around the world in seconds by just about anyone with the means to own a computer. That is technological reality. You either accept it and deal with it or you perish.

Those who refuse to accept that reality will go the way of the dodo bird. And no, threatening granny with lawsuits isn't a viable business plan.

And to your initial question, there's more revenue coming from streaming than there is from CDs. And these services also benefit consumers, which is the whole point of any business.
 
Patriot24 said:
Looking for a music video? Go to YouTube.
What is she saying in the second verse? Go to a shady lyrics site.
Want to see if that band is coming to your town? Go to TicketMaster.
Want to learn how to play the song on your guitar? Go to a tablature website.
Click to expand...

Itunes has Music Videos to buy.

As far as Itunes streaming videos like Youtube. What's the point ? You're either gonna have to pay (who's gonna do that with Youtube around ? ) or allow a wide spectrum of advertisers onto Itunes because labels are gonna want their money just like they get from Youtube.

It just makes no sense to implement.

as far as the lyrics go, I'm sure artists are free to customize their artist pages and have their labels add the lyrics either to their artist page or to the music purchases as Itunes extras. So that's kinda on the label. Apple is not gonna sit there and have people listen to the lyrics of hundreds of thousands of songs just to type them up inaccurately.

Like I said in a previous post. Are any of the parties profiting gonna cut apple a check for concert promotion ? If not then why bother , even if they did. The cut they would get wouldn't be worth it for them unless they really wanted to do it just because.

and with the whole learning how to play the song, same thing with the lyrics. Who's gonna upload all that musical notation ? Labels have the freedom to do it on Itunes but they dont, that's not Apple's fault.
 
Really excited to see what they do with all this. All Time Low recently visited Apple HQ so presumably they're working directly with musicians on whatever it is they're building.
 
psylence2k said:
Itunes has Music Videos to buy.

As far as Itunes streaming videos like Youtube. What's the point ? You're either gonna have to pay (who's gonna do that with Youtube around ? ) or allow a wide spectrum of advertisers onto Itunes because labels are gonna want their money just like they get from Youtube.

It just makes no sense to implement.

as far as the lyrics go, I'm sure artists are free to customize their artist pages and have their labels add the lyrics either to their artist page or to the music purchases as Itunes extras. So that's kinda on the label. Apple is not gonna sit there and have people listen to the lyrics of hundreds of thousands of songs just to type them up inaccurately.

Like I said in a previous post. Are any of the parties profiting gonna cut apple a check for concert promotion ? If not then why bother , even if they did. The cut they would get wouldn't be worth it for them unless they really wanted to do it just because.

and with the whole learning how to play the song, same thing with the lyrics. Who's gonna upload all that musical notation ? Labels have the freedom to do it on Itunes but they dont, that's not Apple's fault.
Click to expand...

The point is not to argue the specific negotiations of how to make all of this happen, but rather to point out that as it stands, iTunes is relatively behind the times of where music is moving to. That's why Apple acquired Beats.

Hopefully they make something of it.
 
Razeus said:
Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?
Click to expand...

Press the letter and move your thumb up/down until you're on the letter you want. I agree to inaccurate to get it right in one tap, but a touch and move works well. :)
 
Razeus said:
I think the biggest problem with iTunes is:

Unless I'm on an Apple device, I can't access the damn thing.

...

But I digress.
iTunes is not about music. It's about "give us your money and get out!
Click to expand...

Why is it that the "best albums" list are rolling out on blogs, yet no links for me to go iTunes?
Because music is generally not like sporting teams, and rated against each other - unless it's in terms of sales and charts. Watch This Space I imagine.

Why can't I purchase a concert ticket for an artist I like that's coming to town?
iTunes has no affiliation with concert-promoters or your local club that someone's playing at.

Why do I always have to go elsewhere to find more about an artist/band?
They're not wikipedia.

Why is the UI on desktop and iOS so convoluted?
Get a 27" iMac / iPad / iPhone and it won't be.

Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?
See above.
 
Razeus said:
I think the biggest problem with iTunes is:

Unless I'm on an Apple device, I can't access the damn thing.

Why is it that the "best albums" list are rolling out on blogs, yet no links for me to go iTunes?

Why can't I purchase a concert ticket for an artist I like that's coming to town?

Why do I always have to go elsewhere to find more about an artist/band?

Why is the UI on desktop and iOS so convoluted?

Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?

But I digress.
iTunes is not about music. It's about "give us your money and get out!
Click to expand...

Unless I'm on an Apple device, I can't access the damn thing.
I'm assuming you mean the store? You can access it from a PC. So categorically not true.

Why is it that the "best albums" list are rolling out on blogs, yet no links for me to go iTunes?
This isn't iTunes' problem. It's up to the blog writer to link to the album.

Why can't I purchase a concert ticket for an artist I like that's coming to town?
It's for buying music, not concert tickets. There are other services for that.

Why do I always have to go elsewhere to find more about an artist/band?
You don't. There's a biography page on iTunes.

Why is the UI on desktop and iOS so convoluted?
This is a matter of opinion.

Why do the letters on the right side of the iOS app have to be so small that I can't tap the correct place I want to go?
Scroll on that bar. It'll show the letter and you can jump around the alphabet easily and quickly.

But I digress. You were making a point?
 
I just hope that streaming music services won't begin to compete with exclusivity deals with artists. Currently I like the idea of subscription service (haven't subscribed to anything though), but the unexpected behavior of record labels and artists is worrying me. I'm pretty sure that Apple tries to win the war with exclusivity deals, and that is not going to end well for anyone (subscribe to Apple if you want to listen artist x, subscribe to Spotify if you want to listen artist y etc).
 
Razeus said:
Furthermore, I'd like to see what happens with Taylor Swift (don't care for her as an artist, she's more of a puppet).

I don't buy her story about Spotify and therefore pulling her music from the service.

Taylor Swift's label is distributed by Universal, a company Iovine used to help run.

Something is up. I bet her music will be on Apple's new service.
Click to expand...

Conspiracy's aside, there's a lot out there where you're able to read about what spotify is doing wrong with it's payments to artists. I'd suggest reading this. It pretty much sums up why an artist would avoid spotify.

https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b38cd862f66
 
Wow I guess anyone can make GQ's men of the year list these days. :eek:
 
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