I am a European and my reponse is: Apple is a US company and prioritises US services. They supply the UK and Europe and that is good for us. We live in a region with different laws and companies and therefore have to be handled seperately. Therefore, this is what it is. If I was hearing that Apple does not intend to bring the service to Europe, then I would rant. Thanks for assuming that we would all rant though and you did it in such a supercilious manner as well.
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No 'iTunes In The Cloud' for United Kingdom Until 2012
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I am a European and my reponse is: Apple is a US company and prioritises US services. They supply the UK and Europe and that is good for us. We live in a region with different laws and companies and therefore have to be handled seperately. Therefore, this is what it is. If I was hearing that Apple does not intend to bring the service to Europe, then I would rant. Thanks for assuming that we would all rant though and you did it in such a supercilious manner as well.
If the songs were pirated in the first place, then those people aren't going go to and buy it on iTunes... So in the end, this is earning artists money that they otherwise wouldn't of received due to piracy.
No if Americans want something they just do ANYTHING other than talking to get it
You mean like WiFi hotspots and tethering?Quite aside from the fact that Europeans have every right to be a little miffed if such a delay is true; can you imagine the overwhelming avalanche of rants, moans, vulgarities and "let's nuke 'em" comments that would ensue following a rumour that Americans had to wait for something that Europe had first? It doesn't bear thinking about.
It is not just the iTunes Match part that will be missing.
You will not be able to download your purchased items on other devices or have them sync automatically to all your devices when you purchase something new. You will also not be able to redownload music that you have already purchased. Quite an omission from the standard iCloud service.
It's earning them nothing. $25/year for 20,000 pirated songs. Do the math.
Spotify on the other hand doesn't convert illegal files to legal files for yearly fee.
Instead they remove the incentive for pirating, if you can have easy access to 13 million songs, why would you need to pirate anything?
Apple, on the other hand, is refusing to move to the future. No wonder why, they are making billions from people buying songs. So they are stuck in the past.
Out of that $120 to $180 a year, how much do the songwriters and musicians get paid? Almost exactly zero, small enough of a rounding error to call zero anyway.
30%?!?!? Spotify is taking almost 100%!!!!!
Spotify is just a way for the labels (yes, it's owned in large part by the labels) to tap into music streaming revenue without paying songwriters and musicians anything.
Hey, use Spotify all you want, I dont' care, but you are deluding yourself if you think any of that money goes to artists/musicians.
Why do people keep spouting this rubbish? In what way does swapping your pirated MP3 for an AAC version make the AAC legal? Even if you claim that the iTunes matched version served up for you by iCloud is a different 'thing', you still pirated the original in the first place and obtained the iTunes version dishonestly. It's not as if Apple are going to provide you with a receipt saying you paid for them.
If I launder 100 pirated songs through this service, the music industry doesn't lose any extra money beyond me pirating them in the first place, and I still obtained whatever versions of the songs I end up with through piracy.
the iTunes Songs have a "purchase" date burnt inside them which u can access tho
If the labels had even the tiniest iota of sense they would pull out of itunes altogether en masse. Redesign the model supplying 96k 24 bit wavs and charge £1.50 per song (singles available separately only) £10 for an album. And tell Jobs he can have 10% or do one. Then we might just get some music that is worth listening to.
When I buy music online (which is still in the minority) I tend to buy from 7Digital.com, who I've often found both cheaper and higher quality (choice of MP3 or AAC at 320kbps). Not as nice an interface as the iTunes store, but I can deal with that.
The Apple iTunes Match deal looks like a decent enough way to get iTunes versions of your ripped CDs in the cloud, and I might consider it when it gets here, but in terms of being able to re-download past purchases what Apple is offering is not really anything new. Except for Apple and people who exclusively use iTunes for their music I guess.
I never really took to Spotify... if I want to listen to a random track YouTube will usually suffice, I didn't like the way Spotify connected to a zillion servers, and I didn't like how little artists get from it. And then they limited the free service. so... meh, IMHO it isn't the perfect service many make it out to be. But good luck to those that enjoy it, I hope they manage to come up with a more sustainable and successful model that everyone likes.
As for the record companies - they're just plain weird. Apple is trying to give them more money again, and they are still scared and want to take baby steps. What professional musical artists must make of the people who take a large chunk of the money they earn for managing the promotion and distribution of their music, I really don't know. But if I had a record contract I don't think I'd be very impressed with them.
The Apple iTunes Match deal looks like a decent enough way to get iTunes versions of your ripped CDs in the cloud, and I might consider it when it gets here, but in terms of being able to re-download past purchases what Apple is offering is not really anything new. Except for Apple and people who exclusively use iTunes for their music I guess.
I never really took to Spotify... if I want to listen to a random track YouTube will usually suffice, I didn't like the way Spotify connected to a zillion servers, and I didn't like how little artists get from it. And then they limited the free service. so... meh, IMHO it isn't the perfect service many make it out to be. But good luck to those that enjoy it, I hope they manage to come up with a more sustainable and successful model that everyone likes.
As for the record companies - they're just plain weird. Apple is trying to give them more money again, and they are still scared and want to take baby steps. What professional musical artists must make of the people who take a large chunk of the money they earn for managing the promotion and distribution of their music, I really don't know. But if I had a record contract I don't think I'd be very impressed with them.
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Why does this not surprise me?
I dunno, you'd have to answer that question yourself.
True -- the good thing is that the labels finally get something for the pirated music. 70% of $30 is better than nothing. Especially with the amount of customers who will likely join up.
How is this Apple's fault?! Don't you think they want the UK market? Negotions take time. Cool jets.
Apple is not going to move on this until it's seemless like it is in the US market. Without 100% approval from the UK labels, Apple has to stay put. Apple started the music store April 28, 2003, with only 200,000 — that's 8 years ago. It has taken a long time just to get this thing going ANYWHERE...
2012 is not that long of a wait when you consider everything. I waited longer than that every year just for a new Lord of the Rings movie. Those were long 12 months. This Hobbit thing is killing me.
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lags behind???
Being from the US, i can say that UK definitely beats us in many respects..
1. Consitutional Monarchy (I would love to have a Prince William & Kate)
2. TRUE universal healthcare for all
3. People are more polite and distinguished culturally compared to obnixiousUS
There are more, but those come to my mind.....I wish we did not declare independence against King George III
With respect to 1: What!?
With respect to 3: People are pretty much the same everywhere. Although you might be thinking of Canada.
In fact I think all your points apply to Canada...
Move
It is annoying that the industry that has so benefited with what Apple (et al) have done bites the hand that feeds it.
Without these online stores, much more music would be 'shared' and the record label loses out.
Oh the horror!
OH NO!!! What will I ever do now... no iTunes in the cloud in the UK until next year... My life is over, this is soooo... [Places back of hand on forehead] Oh I think I'll just have to go ki... ...hang on a minute. I can just use the cable that I've been using for the last 4 years to get my music on my phone! I can probably use the new wireless sync too in iOS 5 when that comes out.
I have to say iTunes in the cloud is something that I would never use. Its not a service, its a convenience and a crap one at that. I really don't think its a pain to do a local sync and anyway, my phone doesn't have the room to store any more songs, so I wouldn't be able or even want to download a track from the cloud when I'm out and about - seriously - who would. I mean yeah, it might be nice to be able to do it, but I cant think of an example where it would be useful to actually do it. Now, if it was a streaming service then that would be a different matter. Maybe it will evolve into one in the future?
Also, all the people who say - "Blah, blah.. its the record companies, they should sort it out, they would at least be getting some money from the pirates, with Apples $25/year."
I say this... If you didn't pay for the music in the first place, you're hardly likely to pay Apple $25 just to have access to music which you can already access for free now are you?
iTunes in the cloud meh... hey Apple, you got anything else?
OH NO!!! What will I ever do now... no iTunes in the cloud in the UK until next year... My life is over, this is soooo... [Places back of hand on forehead] Oh I think I'll just have to go ki... ...hang on a minute. I can just use the cable that I've been using for the last 4 years to get my music on my phone! I can probably use the new wireless sync too in iOS 5 when that comes out.
I have to say iTunes in the cloud is something that I would never use. Its not a service, its a convenience and a crap one at that. I really don't think its a pain to do a local sync and anyway, my phone doesn't have the room to store any more songs, so I wouldn't be able or even want to download a track from the cloud when I'm out and about - seriously - who would. I mean yeah, it might be nice to be able to do it, but I cant think of an example where it would be useful to actually do it. Now, if it was a streaming service then that would be a different matter. Maybe it will evolve into one in the future?
Also, all the people who say - "Blah, blah.. its the record companies, they should sort it out, they would at least be getting some money from the pirates, with Apples $25/year."
I say this... If you didn't pay for the music in the first place, you're hardly likely to pay Apple $25 just to have access to music which you can already access for free now are you?
iTunes in the cloud meh... hey Apple, you got anything else?
Out of that $120 to $180 a year, how much do the songwriters and musicians get paid? Almost exactly zero, small enough of a rounding error to call zero anyway.
30%?!?!? Spotify is taking almost 100%!!!!!
Spotify is just a way for the labels (yes, it's owned in large part by the labels) to tap into music streaming revenue without paying songwriters and musicians anything.
Hey, use Spotify all you want, I dont' care, but you are deluding yourself if you think any of that money goes to artists/musicians.
It's not zero, but it's smaller for obvious reasons, iTunes Store are paying once, when you buy the song, streaming services, adds upp everytime you listen to the song.
About profit, and what the artist is getting paid.
Apple is taking 30%. So from a $0.99 song, Apple gets 30 cents, and the artist gets 9 cents. Apple is getting 300% of what the artist is getting, they are making billions from iTunes Store sales.
Spotify are actually losing money right now. It has to do with their agreement with the record companies, they are paying as much for a free, ad-supported, user listening to a song as for someone with a paid Spotify subscription. That's why Spotify has decided to remove the original free, invite only, option, and seriously cut down on Spotify Open, the other free option.
With less free user, each artist will be paid more for each play, so I'm not sure that the image is correct about the current payout for Spotify.
Also, per the image, from the money that reaches the record companies, the artists are getting a bigger share from Spotify, 20%, than from iTunes, 12.5%. So you're wrong about where the record companies are tapping into the revenue...
The problem isn't in the percentages (which can be rigged to say anything), the problems is in the orders of magnitude.
You would have to listen to that song 3104 times on Spotify before the artist made the same nine cents as they would get from the iTunes sale.
For a 3 minute song, that amounts to 155 hours and 12 minutes of listening time of the same song for nine cents of artist revenue.
The problem with Spotify is that generates the appearance of an above-board operation when in reality it is no better than stealing from the artist, in that it pays them nothing.
As I said before, I don't care whether or not you listen to Spotify, but don't assume the artist is getting anything from the deal.
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I'm rather curious about your math. Buying one $0.99 song on iTunes gives the artist 9 cents. One person, listening to one song on Spotify, according to the image, gives the artist 0.043 cents. Now divide 9 cents by 0.043. That's 209.
If you can't understand the difference between paying per stream and paying for a purchase and why the first one is smaller, I can't help you. Or if your math skills mean that you have a problem adding up smaller numbers.
But one thing is clear, Spotify isn't trying to get the 30% Apple wants.
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In what way can the percentages be rigged that regular numbers can't? Is the image your touting rigging the percentages? Should we just trust the parts that you like?
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Also, the Spotify numbers are sourced from a link from Basca that can be found anymore and from 'industry sources'. You're complaining about that percentages can be rigged, but you're trusting these numbers that you can't check?
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Here's a reply from Spotify about those numbers.
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