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

MidwestMacGuy said:
There's a hole to be plugged but they are looking at the wrong side of the....equation.

Streaming, even in the subscription form is a dud. The money being brought in is less than the cost in royalties. Apple likes big margin markets and subscription streaming has negative margins. Apple got sold like a cheap hooker.

Two things have come together that will set the trend: super inexpensive flash storage, and high-res DSD, FLAC and other formats. This could be a kinda new category for Apple. New iPods with 250GB+ storage and non-compressed audio formats. These pocket music players are being sold right now mostly above $500 and as much as $2,000 for the device. If iTunes started delivering those high-res formats they preserve the power of iTunes and Apple could sell another high margin piece of hardware.

With the hiring of Tomlinson Holman I think Apple is on this problem. Tomlinson will plug the right hole and Apple will squeal with joy as the money starts flowing in from music once again.
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So why did Apple need to spend $3B on Beats to do this?
 
cariacou said:
so basically iTunes Radio could have seen the popularity of Pandora+Spotify+BeatsRadio+iHeart+LastFM+Rhapsody all combined?
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No, simply because the reason why those guys went viral is platform independence. They work everywhere. Apple would have definitely had a bigger market share though.
 
I think it is laughable to think these balding old men have half a clue about contemporary popular culture. Just look at the categories they lump music into. It's essentially the same categories I remember seeing in record stores in the 80's.
"Where do I find British punk rock?"
"Oh that's in indie, or import".
Music has moved on since the days of hair metal power ballads.
They need to go beyond the silly labels and the 'radio stations' that bear no resemblance to the bands that are associated with them.
Until then folks will just keep buying used CD's to populate our iTunes and ignoring what Iovine and company 'think' we like.
 
Somebody get Cue another shirt. It's the same one he was wearing in yesterday's MR headline article.
 
Razeus said:
Beats still doesn't have a dedicated product page on Apple's website. LOL.
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I doubt they ever will. Apple didn't purchase Beats for the headphones - they bought Beats for the music streaming.

Look at the Beats Pills for gods sake. Can you really see Apple supporting those goofy characters? Never.

They might have some interesting patents, but soon Beats will be dissolved into Apple. Maybe Apple will release headphones similar to Beats, but don't expect it to have "Beats Audio" like many ****** laptops and phones like to have on it. It'll just be Apple Headphones.
 
MidwestMacGuy said:
There's a hole to be plugged but they are looking at the wrong side of the....equation.

Streaming, even in the subscription form is a dud. The money being brought in is less than the cost in royalties. Apple likes big margin markets and subscription streaming has negative margins. Apple got sold like a cheap hooker.

Two things have come together that will set the trend: super inexpensive flash storage, and high-res DSD, FLAC and other formats. This could be a kinda new category for Apple. New iPods with 250GB+ storage and non-compressed audio formats. These pocket music players are being sold right now mostly above $500 and as much as $2,000 for the device. If iTunes started delivering those high-res formats they preserve the power of iTunes and Apple could sell another high margin piece of hardware.

With the hiring of Tomlinson Holman I think Apple is on this problem. Tomlinson will plug the right hole and Apple will squeal with joy as the money starts flowing in from music once again.
Click to expand...

High resolution music is DOA. iTunes sales numbers are going down the toilet. Raising prices won't change that. Sure, margins will be great. Sales numbers won't be so great.
 
MidwestMacGuy said:
There's a hole to be plugged but they are looking at the wrong side of the....equation.

Streaming, even in the subscription form is a dud. The money being brought in is less than the cost in royalties. Apple likes big margin markets and subscription streaming has negative margins. Apple got sold like a cheap hooker.

Two things have come together that will set the trend: super inexpensive flash storage, and high-res DSD, FLAC and other formats. This could be a kinda new category for Apple. New iPods with 250GB+ storage and non-compressed audio formats. These pocket music players are being sold right now mostly above $500 and as much as $2,000 for the device. If iTunes started delivering those high-res formats they preserve the power of iTunes and Apple could sell another high margin piece of hardware.

With the hiring of Tomlinson Holman I think Apple is on this problem. Tomlinson will plug the right hole and Apple will squeal with joy as the money starts flowing in from music once again.
Click to expand...

While a nice thought, Apple will never produce the audiophiles dream iPod. There just isn't a large enough market.
 
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.
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Overpriced headphones with *****house audio quality?

Ok.

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The hole Apple has with regards to music is the sale of lossless music on the itunes store.
 
BubbaMc said:
Overpriced headphones with *****house audio quality?

Ok.

----------

The hole Apple has with regards to music is the sale of lossless music on the itunes store.
Click to expand...

Latest reviews from people that actually review headphones don't agree with your assessment. Please revise...
 
BubbaMc said:
Overpriced headphones with *****house audio quality?

Ok.

----------

The hole Apple has with regards to music is the sale of lossless music on the itunes store.
Click to expand...

I think you need to read what I wrote again.

I wasn't talking about their headphones.

Lossless music would be great, but that's a niche market. It's not going to save them since the market is moving away from purchased music. Further, many of the major services, including Beats and Spotify, already offer streaming bitrates that are functionally equivalent to lossless.
 
heeloliver said:
While a nice thought, Apple will never produce the audiophiles dream iPod. There just isn't a large enough market.
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I think Apple already does produce an audiophile's dream iPod. My iPhone or iPad can hold music of any bitrate I like, and feed it to the DAC and amp of my choice digitally. I guess there is a tiny market of people who insist that all be integrated into a single device, but at the rate that DAC's are changing, I think it makes a lot more sense to separate the components out.

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Tough Guy said:
Huh?
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No part of the market that is currently worth pursuing for a company like Apple cares about music of higher resolution than the 320k already on offer. Even the tiny niche that cares can't really demonstrate that there is a discernible difference, even with thousands of dollars worth of gear.

For the equipment used by 99.5% of the market, 320k is functionally the same as lossless.
 
Looking forward to seeing what they come up with. As I'm in the UK I can't use Beats Music currently. I've also got my music collection which is too large for iTunes Match, so have started using Spotify while at work and away from my computer. An integrated streaming service would be ideal for me.
 
heeloliver said:
I doubt they ever will. Apple didn't purchase Beats for the headphones - they bought Beats for the music streaming.

Look at the Beats Pills for gods sake. Can you really see Apple supporting those goofy characters? Never.

They might have some interesting patents, but soon Beats will be dissolved into Apple. Maybe Apple will release headphones similar to Beats, but don't expect it to have "Beats Audio" like many ****** laptops and phones like to have on it. It'll just be Apple Headphones.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? The Beats by Dre headphone brand is the reason Iovine and Dre are filthy rich. The Beats streaming music service isn't worth anything close to $3 billion. If Apple gets rid of the Beats by Dre branding then this acquisition was even stupider than I thought.
 
Applw would do me a favor by reverting the iTunes interface back to the 2003 version. The last thing it needs is more crap added via zip ties and duck tape.
 
The point I was trying to make on quality...

Most users don't care and think AAC+ 256k is great...

But if you honestly take the original 44khz uncompressed AIFF from the CD/CDR album and listen to this file, uncompressed, on a good audio system (I have a Yamaha system with subwoofer)...you can honestly hear a *huge* difference in the quality of the original vs. the file Apple sells on iTunes.

The 256k file seems muffed, diminished, and airy...

The original is crisp, deep, tight, and much more complex in sound...

Apple offers a lot of electronic music selections and that is what I normally download from iTunes, stuff I would play on a high-end audio system, not an iPhone, iPad, or internal speakers. I always play my music on a stereo/sub setup...

Just hoping Apple will offer high(er) end audio. If not full uncompressed, then something like Apple Lossless would be better than the current offerings. Heck, I think even a 320k MP3 sounds better than 256k AAC!
 
kemal said:
Applw would do me a favor by reverting the iTunes interface back to the 2003 version. The last thing it needs is more crap added via zip ties and duck tape.
Click to expand...

YES! I'm glad I'm not the only person who thinks this! For me, the iTunes 4 interface is pretty damn perfect. I still use it on my PC.

itunes4.jpg
 
glad I'm not the only one on here who was like "Hole?" "Plug?" whaatttt???
 
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 have used them all, or at least most. MOG, which is what Beats purchased for $15 million, had the best library and for a long while, the highest quality.

But once Beats acquired MOG, they removed Artist Radio (the Pandora-like radio feature) and also killed the desktop app.

So, after trying to live with Beats for a few months, I realized I hated it and hated what beats had done to MOG.

Now I use Google Play, which is the closest thin to what MOG was. Google Play appears to have a better library than Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, etc., but a tad poorer than what MOG had.

The Google Play artist radio station algorithm is also decent, although not as good as Pandora, which is by far the best, IMO.

Plus, Google Play is cheaper, at $less than $8 per month and it includes access to the premium YouTube service.

This purchase of Beats by Apple was great for Beats, which managed to turn their $15 million acquisition of MOG into one of the best investments of the century. But why Apple went for it, is puzzling at best.
 
AgentElliot007 said:
Most of the whining musicians are colossally ignorant. They have little understanding of the history of recorded music, let alone the terms of their own contracts. Many label acts don't understand that the streaming terms in their contracts with their label are not indicative of what Spotify actually pays out. Many are just ignorant and bitter in general, and they haven't yet figured out that they are not entitled to a career in the music industry just because they want one.

And hell, even in the heyday of recorded music, most acts made their money on the road, and merch plays as big a part of it now as it ever has.

Artists have more tools to reach people and more ways to sell themselves as a product than ever before. The problem isn't Spotify, it's that far too often, the product just isn't that good. Same as it ever was.

And for the record, I'm a working musician in Nashville who knows and works with a great many working musicians. I'm not trying to throw musicians under the bus for the sake of doing so, most are good people, but there is just a tremendous amount of ignorance and resistance in this industry right now. All of the whining and proliferation of misinformation gets very, very, very old, and it's not helping anyone or improving the overall situation at all.
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My post was tongue-in-cheek of course. I agree completely and it is good to hear it coming from actual musicians.
 
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