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MTV and Microsoft Music Store in 2006
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decksnap said:
Yep, the record companies dictate the royalties. Though some stores may choose to run at a lesser profit margin ( i.e., Walmart ) but at the end of the day there isn't much leeway.
In fact, the record companies could choose which music stores live or die by dictating different royalties. If they get really pissed off with Apple ( for not budging on prices, for example ) they could choose to charge Apple 20% higher royalties than other online music stores.
repeating the common sentiment
Doomed to failure...
Is Mtv actually cool for anyone? Anyone who has money to spend on music? I mean, really now... the only thing that Mtv does that is halfway interesting are the movie awards.. that's it... not video awards, not any other music related things they have.
Are people going to go out and buy wma protected portable music players just so they can buy music from Microsoft/mtv?
They only chance they would have, and I would not be surprised if they did it, would be if they would give away music players for "free" like the cell phone companies give away phones. Otherwise they are fscked.
Doomed to failure...
Is Mtv actually cool for anyone? Anyone who has money to spend on music? I mean, really now... the only thing that Mtv does that is halfway interesting are the movie awards.. that's it... not video awards, not any other music related things they have.
Are people going to go out and buy wma protected portable music players just so they can buy music from Microsoft/mtv?
They only chance they would have, and I would not be surprised if they did it, would be if they would give away music players for "free" like the cell phone companies give away phones. Otherwise they are fscked.
Snarry said:In all fairness, the early 360s have been crashing just like we have come to expect of MS products!
In all fairness, is the failure rate any worse than the first generation of iMac G5's? If we're being fair and all.
Peace said:
Does anyone know how much advertising Apple has been doing on Viacom's networks? Should be interesting to see if there are iPod commercials on any of the "MTV Networks" channels in the future. Or if "MTV Networks" will accept any advertising from them.
Viacom and Apple are on pretty friendly terms, witness Mighty MouseScottgfx said:
I doubt that will change much, if at all.Urge, if it works as it's supposed to work, will be more of an interactive TV channel, and portable players aren't really where they are aiming. The ability to grab burnable/portable tracks falls more into the nice-little-extra category, but Viacom aren't even talking about that so much as the community aspect.
iTMS really is a different creature, it's a store and pretty tightly focused on that. iMix might pass for semi-interactive, and they've added reviews, but still it's not really a social destination.
One drawback of iTunes as it's currently implemented it that it really doesn't integrate seamlessly with the Web. It bumps you off into its own separate little program. That's not a good model for a site that wants to keep your eyes glued to the screen.
ioinc said:
Good points. MS has very, very deep pockets. They have tens of billions in cash. Others in this thread have talked about how the iPod has economies of scale that prevent others from competing on price. Well, MS has enough money to, if they choose to, loss lead for a very long time on competitive playback devices until they kill off their competitive target.
They've done this before.
Whether antistrust lets them get away with this is something else...
Stella said:
Ok, then I'll go with it being a double standard for a second. And when it comes to MS - I don't care that it is. We are talking about "Probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age."
Another MS monopoly is the last thing the world needs.
iMeowbot said:Viacom and Apple are on pretty friendly terms, witness Mighty Mouse
A letter from Apple Legal from the future:
Dear loyal customer,
Due to circumstances beyond our control, the device that has been marketed and sold as the "Mighty Mouse" will henceforth be sold as "The Terminator Robot". Please use the included black marker to expunge any reference to said "Mighty Mouse". Thank you for your cooperation and attention to this matter.
devman said:
Just like the last MS Monopoly, Apple is in the driver's seat here. They can get aggressive or they can just sit on their laurels again completely dismissing the threat Microsoft poses. One thing Steve Jobs has never been good at is competing on a level playing field. Also mind you that the iPod is one of the few without FM Radio Radio or voice recorder functions.
If MTV offers up videos of the original Headbanger's Ball from the 80's I might buy a few episodes. As long as they are not in or can be converted from the very crappy Media Player format. M$ is a joke when it comes to media and the ability to play it.
Stella said:
No you can blame it on the music industry, if they didnt make DRM mandatory then there wouldnt be this problem, music would be downloadable (legally) in mp3 format
In fact the music that i listen to is legally downloadable at sites like beatport.com, smaller labels that arent out to take as much money from people as possible and are actually interested in music are embracing the digital revolution
devman said:
If Apple were in ms position, they would be even worse, including controlling the hardware as well as software. You only have to look at iPod and iTMS to see what Apple would be like (amongst MANY other examples). If windows had < 5% marketshare I very much doubt Apple would support windows.
nagromme said:
What IMO would be interesting is if Apple would (quietly?) include some sort of WMA-to-open-source file conversion plug-in into both iTunes and Quicktime.
If one postulates a network connection, they could conceivably use it to identify DRM'ed WMA's and if they can cross-reference them to the iTMS, offer the consumer a licence transfer...preferably at zero cost, naturally...so as to permit consumers who want to buy WMA's from other sources to eventually accumulate (and thus, more fully migrate) to iTMS.
Such a strategy (even if it wasn't free) would probably make that 75% market share of iPod users happy, and more willing to say with an Apple branded MP3 player...
-hh
I see. So if I buy a 12 pack of Coca-Cola, my local supermarket will let me switch it for a 12 pack of Pepsi, free of charge? That's not really how the world works, and you shouldn't expect this type of strategy from any kind of company ever. Apple giving out free iTMS songs to somebody who purchased those same songs via WMA from Microsoft is slightly insane. Even if it wasn't free... why would people ever pay for the same **** in a different package??-hh said:
Randall said:lmao I new somebody would say that. how many units are crashing versus how many work? how many units were damaged during shipping? these are things that you come to expect. I'm sure that you read about all of the constant crashing on slashdot or some other MS-hater zone. Trust me, I own a xbox 360, and it is awesome, and has never crashed, not once. It is PPC based too
There is definately something to be said about designing your own hardware and software in-house. Seemless integration is very important to an OSes stability.
The 360 is a POS anyway and every electronics professional worth anything knows it. Not only is there the overheating/quality issue, but the system has video quality only marginally beter than the original, and a software library that is aneimic at best. Backwards compatability is also severely limited. Heck, 7 of the 11 games currently avaliable are sports games! Certainly nothing that makes it worthwhile. Those with half an ounce of common sense and patience would to well to wait for the PS3 coming Q1 of '06, which will have true next-gen video quality (reportedly over twice that of the 360) and promises to have an impressive game library combined with FULL backwards compatability.
The RIAA truely does suck. I am hoping that DRM will come back to bite them in the ass someday, because those greedy __insert colorful adjective here__ deserve it.NicP said:
DRM is not Apple's fault, and it's not Microsoft's fault either. They are being forced to comply with "the man"
sunrunner said:
This is along the lines of what I was thinking too, for we have to remember that Microsoft is trying to get into this game at this point not to make money, but instead, to gain marketshare.
The way that Apple can maintain (or increase) marketshare is by having its device more "open" to receiving content from more places - - ie, MP3's that others have sold.
It then comes down to how much this would cost, versus what the longer term benefits of it will be.
Insofar as to the question of if Apple could offer a "free" (consumer's cost, either real or perceived) DRM'ed MP3 to DRM'ed Fairplay conversion, one thing to keep in mind is that from the perspective of the Record Labels, Mr. Steve can try to make the arguement that the consumer already owns one legal copy, so what is the incremental value of a second copy...or of a "format trade-in" which removes the DRM'ed MP3 from legal circulation. In either circumstance, a good case can be made that the price for this song should be less than $0.99
Furthermore, Mr. Steve can also try selling it to the record labels today as a contemporary experiment that would work towards a long term strategy of getting consumers used to the idea of "swapping in" their libraries - - the consumer's perceived benefit would be newer/better formats (& other "extras") while at the same time being good for the Labels because this could of course include future, more robust DRM schemes as their pay-off.
In the meantime, Apple thrives because they still sell iPods regardless of if the M$TV store is successful or not...and likely increases the consumer penetration of iTMS, as while there will be defections from iTMS to M$TV, there's also going to be some new market additions that are initially brought in by M$TV, but then defect to iTMS. From there, its "May the better *consumer* product win".
-hh