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Universal Music Group's iTunes Contract
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Let's see how their 'we don't need no iTunes music store' resolution holds up in 12 months time when the iPhone nano is shipping a 100 million units a year, iPhone one is shipping 50 million a year, Ipod 6G is shipping 50mill and eermm well you know what I mean...
Worse still 500 million iTunes customers are busy buying artists from other labels and sending them into the celebrity stratosphere...
VERY risky power play from Universal....You know they're almost stupid enough to go bust over this!...
Worse still 500 million iTunes customers are busy buying artists from other labels and sending them into the celebrity stratosphere...
VERY risky power play from Universal....You know they're almost stupid enough to go bust over this!...
Very Risky
Then all the labels won't renew their contracts. Personally, I think there is more chance of Apple to stop selling digital music(for other labels) than to continue if they start their own label.
You don't want to play ball with me? OK. I'll make my own music label. And it will be the best on the planet!
Then all the labels won't renew their contracts. Personally, I think there is more chance of Apple to stop selling digital music(for other labels) than to continue if they start their own label.
I think Universal's artists will revolt if Apple locks out Universal. Those artists won't support itunes. Artists are greedy too. Apple has to leave the ball in
Universals court, so Apple doesn't look like the bad guy.
Some thoughts on this...
First off, I don't personally give a damn if the entire recording label industry burns and rots in hell. They are and have for the longest time imaginable been nothing more than a gigantic parasite feeding off of the artists and the general public. The sooner they're gone, the better for everyone.
Secondly, I know full well that Apple, like any other big business (and just as important any other publicly-traded -- i.e. "there are shareholders" -- business) are in it to make a buck. However, apart from that, you have to also take a look at what Apple's agenda is. Yes, I understand the mantra of "follow the money", but even if you had God and The Devil in two different businesses trying to make money, at the end of the day you still have to take congnizance of the fact that it's two different business owners, and two very different agendas.
Thirdly, no matter what else you may say, the Labels aren't helping to make their artists rich -- except in the sense of helping to put their name about -- it's the artists who make themselves rich (or don't) depending on what business strategy they employ. If you look at my own CD collection, it (with a few exceptions) stopped in the mid 1990s when, as a result of both the signal to noise (aka "good stuff to garbage") ratio swung disproportionately towards the "noise" side as well as the availability of alternative means of acquiring music.
Forthly, that "alternative means" does not exclusively mean p2p, but also indie artist sources as well.
I know this may be construed as an "advertisement" but I can't help it, these sources are worthy of your attention:
I list these (and have elsewhere from time to time) because I feel they're worth your time to check out, both for the beauty of their own works as well as to demonstrate there's plenty of alternatives to the namby-pamby pablum puke that the Big 4 try to spoon-feed us.
Oh, and to the poster(s) who wanted to convince us we're just looking at this wrong or that we're nothing but Apple Fanbois, well... consider the source, you trolls!!!
First off, I don't personally give a damn if the entire recording label industry burns and rots in hell. They are and have for the longest time imaginable been nothing more than a gigantic parasite feeding off of the artists and the general public. The sooner they're gone, the better for everyone.
Secondly, I know full well that Apple, like any other big business (and just as important any other publicly-traded -- i.e. "there are shareholders" -- business) are in it to make a buck. However, apart from that, you have to also take a look at what Apple's agenda is. Yes, I understand the mantra of "follow the money", but even if you had God and The Devil in two different businesses trying to make money, at the end of the day you still have to take congnizance of the fact that it's two different business owners, and two very different agendas.
Thirdly, no matter what else you may say, the Labels aren't helping to make their artists rich -- except in the sense of helping to put their name about -- it's the artists who make themselves rich (or don't) depending on what business strategy they employ. If you look at my own CD collection, it (with a few exceptions) stopped in the mid 1990s when, as a result of both the signal to noise (aka "good stuff to garbage") ratio swung disproportionately towards the "noise" side as well as the availability of alternative means of acquiring music.
Forthly, that "alternative means" does not exclusively mean p2p, but also indie artist sources as well.
I know this may be construed as an "advertisement" but I can't help it, these sources are worthy of your attention:
I list these (and have elsewhere from time to time) because I feel they're worth your time to check out, both for the beauty of their own works as well as to demonstrate there's plenty of alternatives to the namby-pamby pablum puke that the Big 4 try to spoon-feed us.
Oh, and to the poster(s) who wanted to convince us we're just looking at this wrong or that we're nothing but Apple Fanbois, well... consider the source, you trolls!!!
...and so the digital music revolution did end as each and every label attempted to build a stupid clunky music store of their own not thinking for one second that the general public would ;
a) not know where the crap to get such and such an artist from since they don't know which label theyr're on
b) not be prepared to trawl through 500 different, complex websites, all requiring different logins and credit card accounts and download folders and other tedious complexities all just to get music onto their mp3 players.
c) not prepared to have a multitude of bespoke formats, music players, download agents, drm software checkers etc etc that would doubtless evolve from every label attemptin to do their own thing
d) find that half their music became subscription based
e) thought it was really too much like hard work so 'junior' said he'd just go get a copy for them - and we all know what that means...
How much yearly revenue does Universal currently receive from iTunes sales? It has got to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It just doesn't make any business sense to me. I know they probably want an increase in price for song downloads, and probably a piece of the revenues for each iPod/iPhone sold, (not going to happen). I have always thought that $0.99 for a song was a fair price, and I love the fact I am not forced to pay for the filler that the record labels force down our throats on albums.
If they pull their catalog from the iTunes store, well I'll just buy less music, and be tempted once again will the illegal side of the digital music scene. That isn't a threat, but a reality of what they are doing. Most people use a service like iTunes because they want to own music. Take that away or make it too expensive, and you are turning more people into what your number one complaint about the digital music industry is.
If they pull their catalog from the iTunes store, well I'll just buy less music, and be tempted once again will the illegal side of the digital music scene. That isn't a threat, but a reality of what they are doing. Most people use a service like iTunes because they want to own music. Take that away or make it too expensive, and you are turning more people into what your number one complaint about the digital music industry is.