Northeastern and Apple?

[macnulty]

not a good idea, first it breaks the simplicity of the system by offering a seperate pricing structure for a university: how can Apple approach the record labels with a one size fits all deal then turn around and offer different consumers different deals, second, napster as an example? give me a break they leak money as fast as a windows os leaks security. But then again if the whole idea is to sell
iPods, there is nothing more appealing then a 20 year old moroon with some cash and a dull saturday night in the mid-west or pa for that matter :})

 

[Inspector Lee]

I think this could be a potential nail in the coffin of Napster. Most college kids lack the $$$ to blow on downloaded music. There are too many other necessary expenses on top of food, tuition and books e.g. booze, smokes, prophylactics, exotic oils, etc. If you didn't have a whole lot of coin lying around, which would you rather have:

1) 10 songs for $10
2) Unlimited access to 1,000,000+ songs for 30 days for $10

We all know iTMS is pretty slick, I mean right know with the pepsi cap thing, I'm donwloading songs for quasi-free hand over fist. However, in the future wouldn't it be nice to have choices over which company to download songs from?

It would pain me to see Jobs morph into a "Gateshole" on this issue.

I. Lee

 

[Snowy_River]

Re: New math

Originally posted by splashman
...(heck, they won't even sell their hardware at a reasonable margin for the sake of increasing market share!)...

You know, I get sick and tired of comments like these. If someone has an actual link showing that Apple's margins are significantly higher than those of the rest of the market, please provide it. It's not hard, at any price point, to find a roughly equivalent machine on the Wintel side that costs the same. Yes, it's from a high quality computer manufacturer, but that's what Apple is.

If you're complaining that there are no cheap Macs because there are no clones, then that's another issue, which I've talked about before. Until Apple gains more marketshare,, it would be suicide to license clones again...

 

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by ssnmx
... And this year my university increased tuition by almost $800!! Did I mention PUBLIC university? ...

Forgive me if I don't have that much sympathy for you. My university increased resident tuition by over $1000 last year, and is considering an increase of more than $600 this year.

And, yes, mine is a public university, too.

My undergrad school was a private university, and I recall one year when the tuition went up by $2000, from $16000 to $18000. My load debt from that is hefty...

 

[billyboy]

There is more to education than poring over books and assignments. If the iTMS "philosophy" can be engrained into students, they will be learning a lesson for life that it is possible to have your musical cake and eat it as long as you put a little bit back into the system.

 

[iFranky]

Good start

This is good news for Apple if it comes off.

But what they REALLY need to do is to win the standards war. If they don't make AAC the de facto standard then the wheel is off as badly as it was when Mac market share sunk into single figures in the 90s.

They need to make it the cheapest technology to license, support people embedding AAC-DRM support in music players et al.

They have the best music player and the best store, hands down. But its not always going to be like this as the market expands. They can't allow themselves to become the prohibitively expensive 'niche' supplier in this market if they want to succeed.

 

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by billyboy
There is more to education than poring over books and assignments. If the iTMS "philosophy" can be engrained into students, they will be learning a lesson for life that it is possible to have your musical cake and eat it as long as you put a little bit back into the system.

iTMS will be an important part of every student's education. I'm sure most students will buy mostly educational "books on tape" and buy popular music only for scholarly research if they are music majors.

 

[curious0]

well

seeing as I'm a member of the NEU system I would be happy about hearing that my school was involved in such a project, however given that they just cancelled Ludakris and Jurassic 5 from playing due to post superbowl rioting I question whether apple would continue to be associated with them either.

as for the business details, I doubt it is happening though it is an interesting rumor. It could be a measure to make the now angry student body happier about having their spring fest cancelled, but it just seems unlikely. Part of the question would be are all students going to be able to download, or just those on campus.

 

[Counterfit]

seeing as I'm a member of the NEU system I would be happy about hearing that my school was involved in such a project, however given that they just cancelled Ludakris and Jurassic 5 from playing due to post superbowl rioting I question whether apple would continue to be associated with them either.

as for the business details, I doubt it is happening though it is an interesting rumor. It could be a measure to make the now angry student body happier about having their spring fest cancelled, but it just seems unlikely. Part of the question would be are all students going to be able to download, or just those on campus.

Pff. We all know they should move the target down Huntington Ave a bit and strike a deal with WIT!




HAHAHA!!! Like that would ever happen, this school is so horribly in M$'s pocket, it's not funny. That and I don't think it would be running by the end of the year, so I don't care if they get it here.

 

[RichardCarletta]

One thing to remember is

Apple only makes 10 cents per Itunes download . The rest of the fee , 89 cents goes to the Recording industry , so Apple could not reduce the download fee lower than 89 cents. As for college kids , they expect to be treated as adults . Adults are expected to be responsible for their actions as well as the consequences of their actions. Therefore if they are caught illegally downloading music, they should expect to pay the piper. Using the Apple Itunes Store is legal , but using it everyday could really slowdown the college's network. If a school has broadband facilities , then maybe it could work out. Maybe schools could restrict downloading Itunes music to Weekends , that way schoolwork and research would be less impacted by massive network traffic.

 

[Counterfit]

I'd like to assume that a large school like NU has sufficient bandwidth to deal with it. And it's not like no one there uses it now anyway.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

It hit me what the solution is.

They just buy one copy of each song and have a copy of iTunes running on a bunch of beefy servers sharing their playlists.

No changes to the licenses.
No onerous continuing fees.

If Apple were *REALLY* clever they could even subcontract out the selling inside of the subdomain and give the school a cut. The school could perhaps even make money on it.

 

[andybouchard]

I am a NEU undergrad, and like most colleges and universities our tuition is going up also. Although this would be one of the few good things I would not mind paying for. But, I sort of doubt this will happen at NEU, but hey, you never know! I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

 

[Counterfit]

It hit me what the solution is.

They just buy one copy of each song and have a copy of iTunes running on a bunch of beefy servers sharing their playlists.

No changes to the licenses.
No onerous continuing fees.

That wouldn't work. You have to authorize the computer playing the song, not just the one that has the file. So streaming like that wouldn't work.

 

[ebuddy889]

This blog reports on an unconfirmed rumor that Apple may be stepping up to negotiate with at least one college to provide iTunes Music service to their students.

According to the blog, Northeastern University "is negotiating to buy a predetermined number of downloads at the reduced rate from iTMS so that its students will be encouraged not to download songs off P2P networks."

So far Napster has found success in negotiating deals with universities to provide their unlimited streaming service for college students. Apple's iTunes does not share a similar flat-fee/unlimited access model, however, so its unclear how such a deal would be implemented.

Why don't they just put a real music store on campus such as "Strawberries", and block all access to p2p networks. Make them buy the CD if they want to listen to the new songs. Otherwise you make the college "in the business" of selling music. Plus you incurr a cost of music in the tuition to these colleges for everyone and some might not even listen to music or the selection that is offered.

Today music is the fad, tomorrow who knows.... movies, software then what porn? when does it end?

You know if you buy the cd, and burn only the songs you like to another mixed cd with a few other songs from cd's you bought, no one will ever know, incuding the RIAA. And I believe it's pefectly legal as long as you don't sell the cd's.

You can dump the contents of a music cd onto an ipod within seconds at home or on a friends computer. What is the scenerio at the college? Buy the song from Apple through itunes on campus computers, hook up your ipod to campus computers (if it's permitted) and copy it to your ipod. Doesn't sound legal to me.

Even if you did buy the song it is on campus property. Then you need to erase it from the campus computer? Why would you leave it for others to copy or listen to, you paid for it?

CD's are still the way to go! You'll have those songs in 20 years when they come back to reload on your ipod.....