Apple is readying to launch an online service that will cut straight to the core of digital music distribution, winning the praise of some record executives who see it is as a weapon against online piracy. Apple’s new service will feature songs from all five major record labels, link with its iTunes music software and allow for easy downloading to the iPod, Apples popular digital music player, people familiar with the matter said.
Apple Readies New Online Music Service
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Seriously now, last time I checked we live in an interconnected information age, and there is no need to preach to the converted about the benefits of on-line music transfers. About bloody time that a big music house decided to offer high quality music for download.
Pity the only artists in general, who sign to the majors are dull, uninspired, and derivative.
What format will this use ? mp3 ? ogg Vorbis ? or another new crappy format as WMA ? Will it use DRM ?
I thought Apple was against DRM…
Apple is widely understood to be a leader in simple to learn, simple to use software, so it’s a safe bet that this service, coupled with a new iTunes (an almost certain announcement) and new iPods will work seamlessly.
Provided the pricing *appears* innocuous (regardless of whether or not it actually is) then it has a chance, since it will have some advantages instead of just being “the FastTrack system you pay to use”. Especially in the Macintosh market where many P2P applications seldom tread.
about this service using aac (mp4, ogg-like) for this with some layer of drm being speculated about.
I hope no more annoying drm than the standard ipod/itunes library drm.
But I still fail to see the appeal of Apple’s service compared to Kazaa.
The price would have to be very low per song to make up for the “free” kazaa.
Personally I can’t condone Kazaa, but the fact remains that people won’t stop pirating songs because it’s just too easy.
The “big 5” in the music business are dying, but I don’t think this can save them.
Well I can understand your point of view, but the quality on kazaa is crap. Being able to download each song I like for a decent price in high quality and play it on my ipod is worth a lot to me. It also allows me to never be sued by the riaa, kicked out of college, or ejected from naval academy, etc.
This makes pirating music to not be worth the trouble for the garbage ytou download. Misnamed files, bad tags, bad quality, wrong titles, etc.
I really do hope older artists will be on this, and there be some sort of free preview option.
AFAIK iPod/iTunes only speaks mp3. In order to be able to get ogg vorbis files apple would need to update iPod/iTunes. And yes I know Itunes can play ogg files but it’s not official. we mac users need simple stuff, we want one button to click on and not worry about, if it works or not …
—
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid/
That’s why you don’t go to kazaa for anything. There are much better networks, for instance Soulseek, that has mostly 192+ kbps mp3s with proper tags.
ipod has mp4 support for audio (aac).
And it will be interesting to see how long it takes someone to start reselling,errr….multiple times,their downloads.
I can just see it now…..”nickel a tune..get as many as you want,just 5 cents ea.”
Hay maaan,gotta cover ma bandwidth !!!
One of the above posters mentioned the horrible quality that you get from P2P networks, while I personally agree, I don’t really see the vast majority of people thinking that way.
Most people I know consider the sound made by a cheap $50 stereo to be “high quality”. Even making them listen to the real thing doesn’t help, so the argument won’t hold.
People will go for the cheapest “just-good-enough” solution (look Windows vs Apple).
Of course in America multi billion law suits might stop some, but the truth is that most will estimate the chance of getting caught as small and then do it anyway.
Personally I find America to be a sad and opressed country when you can sue students for “billions” of dollars over music.
Not living in America I am not really qualified to judge, but it seems to me that America is turning into a “corporate-police” state were laywers incite fear to keep profits up.
Look at DMCA and other horrible stuff being passed as LAW. If this goes further America might as well outlaw all electronic devices, because somebody might use them in a way not described in the manual.
I think that in 20 years there wont be a high tech America left, and that all development will have moved to China or Taiwan, where the laws and government are not as opressive.
Sorry I just had to get all this stuff of my chest. Feel free to agree, flame or ignore…
Michael
>>
I think that in 20 years there won’t be a high tech America left, and that all development will have moved to China or Taiwan, where the laws and government are not as opressive.
>>
Nope, not unless China invests tons of resources in military hardware. If China ever becomes a serious threat to American industry, America will invade it and get rid of those, er, weapons of mass industrialisation!
Only 6 days PEOPLE! I hope they have a good selection. Not just the stuff like Eminem and 50 cents. They’d better have a good metal section.
But if people already wanted this they would have subscribed to emusic (or similar). This gets better with time and subscribers (more money = more licenses). It just seems that p2p wins all the time because as has already been said – people are willing to sacrifice some quality if they don’t have to pay for it.
There was a time (when I could afford it
I was an eMusic subscriber. It is indeed a wonderfull feeling to be able to download heaps of mp3s legally. While the quality of their encoding was irregular (some were encoded with Fraunhoffer, some with the crappy Xing), their selection of music (mostly independent labels, some big names, some really freaky music) is great.
It is the closest I’ve been to “the biggest mp3 collection on earth”. If your pipe is fat enough, you don’t even have to download the files, and you get unlimited access to your “library” for streaming from everywhere (no DRM)
Now, if Apple is able to provide a similar service integrated with iTunes, with good quality and reasonable prices, I can see a lot of people actually signing up for it.
As for the DRM, Apple has a history of “simple, not too-in-your-face” software/hardware (the iPod is broadly recognised by the HCI community as one of the best examples of usability there is) so I can imagine they can do a good job with it (meaning DRM will not bother you at all if you are a good boy
Business LOVES services where you keep paying for the same product.. but don’t actually OWN it. Napster worked not because of the free (stolen) music, but the fact it let you try the music before you bought the high quality album. To have a legal solution is great.. but does it really resolve the issues that are caused by the record labels inability to move into the modern age? People will seek solutions even if you restrict them. I’ll still use a free and open file sharing solution if it gives me access to titles not available in the US. Do I care about liciense issues? No. I care about good music.
So against DRM it seems that iPod has them. I seriously think this is something like AAC. Surely not WMA – remember how much money Apple invested in MPEG4?
Nope, not unless China invests tons of resources in military hardware. If China ever becomes a serious threat to American industry, America will invade it and get rid of those, er, weapons of mass industrialisation!
Actually, the more China invest in the military, the less chances of China actually being invaded by any coalition. Besides, US investors is the biggest benefitor in Chinese “weapons of mass industrialisation”.
In a completely unrelated-to-the-above-quote note, the recording business isn’t in the slums because of mass pirating on the Internet. It is its refusal to budge from their own business model and accepting everyone to follow them.
For example, why do I have to buy an entire album just for one or two songs? And why can’t I burn as many copies of it as I can? You can’t fight hard-core piracy – they would always exist, but there is nothing unprofitable about being more consumer friendly.
I’ll still use a free and open file sharing solution if it gives me access to titles not available in the US. Do I care about liciense issues? No. I care about good music.
Well said. For me, p2p is all about getting stuff i can’t just walk down to my local music chain store and pick up. That said, 99% of what i like, i end up buying one way or another.
“In a completely unrelated-to-the-above-quote note, the recording business isn’t in the slums because of mass pirating on the Internet. It is its refusal to budge from their own business model and accepting everyone to follow them.”
I would say this site has a more in depth analysis of the problems with the recording industry.
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html
Piracy is the least of their problems. I would personally start with the whole payola scheme first. Downloading is simply irrelevent compared to that, but that’s another issue altogether.
Ive been planning for this. I am gonna wipe my itunes library of music I dont own, and buy each song at the speculated price of a dollar per. A completely clean, legal, properly tagged library of music I choose, in a format I prefer.
P2P isn’t just for piracy. The other day, I downloaded a couple of Dave Matthews Band albums off overnet to listen too while I wait out the week+ shipping time for my order of the same CDs. Plus, my DVD drive sucks at reading ripping CDs, to the point where just ripping an order of a dozen CDs turns into a day-long affair. I’ll get around to ripping these things eventually (since I really like the –alt-preset feature in lame) but since the only portable I own is an MP3 player, it helps that I have access to these in the meantime.
I think the major problem in legal online music distribution is following – being a foreigner without a credit card makes the service unusable. For people who don’t own credit cards (kids, most of the students etc.) this can be a major problem, why they can’t download music with a clear conscience. Although, in some countries _downloading_ copyrighted music isn’t illegal.
I’m amazed that a post about Apple hasn’t gotten trolled after 24 comments. But maybe they’re asleep on the downside of a Jolt cola jag …
From linux_baby: “I think that in 20 years there won’t be a high tech America left, and that all development will have moved to China or Taiwan, where the laws and government are not as opressive.”
Umm, you must be thinking of a China different from the one that I am thinking of. Oppressive? How about organ harvesting from prisoners? Execution for what amounts to embezzlement?
In addition, although there have been many innovations from China, much of the economic model is based on others’ technology. This has been a state goal for many years now. It may have been more covert in the past, but in the previous decade, one of the only ways to enter into China was by joint-venturing with a company that already exists in China. Many of these joint ventures bleed technology from the West to private and state firms in China. Leading edge technology is still not the country’s strength.
The main buyers of music are teenagers:
1. They don’t have credit cards.
2. If they haven’t got a Mac they can’t afford to buy one just to use this service.
An online music service needs:
1. Widespread uptake of broadband.
2. A secure micropayment system for transactions that does not need credit cards. Neither of these two exist at the moment.
CD blanks cost a few cents and it takes a few minutes to copy a friends CD. Thats the reality regardless of the morality of piracy.
A more likely scenario is that current recording industry will shrink radically and be largely replaced by minor artists producing and electronically distributing their own music.
Apple often produces great technology but Jobs and Co are aging hippies pretty much devoid of sound business sense.
…an artist that wasn’t signed by a billionaire?
Why aren’t we learning to play our own music, and supporting our local talent, instead of paying big companies and watching them wine when we steal with services like Kazaa? Because it’s hard?
When do we break the mold of “producer => pipe => consumer?”
If we have already paid for these “Albums” on CD or whatever, do we have to pay again, and then again in a few years when the file format changes for DMA or other hardware/OS changes?
I’ve “legally” ripped my CD collection to VBR MP3 so that I have a kick-ass jukebox. That doesn’t make me a criminal, but I have a lot of stuff I leagaly bought on tape and vinyl (yes I’m that old).
Hopefully Apple’s service will have a variable pricing level for sound quality. “Preview” 96k or 128 kbs should be a lot lower than the CD-quality. I think that for the financially-stapped/could-care-less-about-the-quality music fan or those who just want to sample a new artist would love that.
So has Apple listed out a service plan yet, and will it be available cross-platform?
Vic
Normally what I do on Kazaa (Lite) is to download at least 3-4 different versions of a song and keep whichever one sounds the best. Using the speakers I have, I honestly can’t tell the difference between a 192k/b mp3 file and CD audio. Of course, if I a sound system that didn’t suck, it might be a different story
It will be interesting to see what pricing model they adopt. Will it be a flat-rate monthly fee? Or a pay-per-download fee? Or perhaps even a mixture of the two? It will also be interesting to see what quality (encoding) levels they provide. I wonder if Apple will make downloads available in different file formats. For example, although MP3 is very widespread, other, superior formats are now available such as the MPE4-AAC Audio Codec (which Apple has incorporated into Quicktime 6).
I don’t see why apple starting/not starting a music download service is so exciteing.
Its not as if no-one else is doing it yet.
http://www.ondemanddistribution.com/eng/outlets/outlets.asp
Where’s the story?
For starters, from what I can read on the webpage, this on-demand-distribution system (like many others) relies on Microsoft Windows and its DRM mechanisms. That are already two strikes against it, as far as Mac users are concerned.
…they haven’t even announced it yet!
that said, the rumours are credible this time, and I dare say that by bundling the service with the OS it becomes more likely to succeed.. unlike the P2P networks which have to be installed and thus only attract people willing to break the law.
*shrug* You still won’t catch me paying for music I already own, and only for new stuff if the price is [i]genuinely>/i> reasonable ( IE significantly less per-track than a CD album )
“I think that in 20 years there wont be a high tech America left, and that all development will have moved to China or Taiwan, where the laws and government are not as opressive. ”
Here is where your argument has a fatal flaw. These laws are being passed for the benefit of industry. In other words, if the US government keeps passing laws like the DMCA, it will make it an extremely favorable environment to sell things in. Sucks to be a consumer, yes, but if all the businesses are in the US, that’s something of a plus, too.
Know why China’s not such a big market? They really don’t have and enforce laws that deal with IP violations. If you think that development is going to flourish in an environment like that, I don’t know what to say.
-Erwos
The biggest advantage of Kazaa is that you can listen to music before you buy it.
To the person who has earned their money the hard way, the quality of music is important to them. High CD prices have killed the impulse purchase for all except the wealthy.
Most CD’s today are composed of 1-2 good songs and the rest is filler.
Most CD’s today are not returnable. Some few stores allow you to return them for partial credit.
Most music stores carry a very poor selection of CD’s, especially if you are a fan of non-top40 music.
Online services want your credit card to even sign up, track you, sell your information, mandate the install of DRM on your computer, etc. It is fair to say that every single online music service today abuses the consumer.
So the situation is grim for the consumer. There is no way to listen to music without purchasing it. Except for Kazaa.
Until any of these services respects the rights of the consumer and stops lying to the consumer, they will not be important. Witness that all the pay-for-music services have not been successful so far and have seemingly captured next to zero consumer interest.
With Apple’s customer being wealthy, it is economically feasible for Apple to offer a high-end music service. However, this has little effect on the music market as a whole as hardly anyone has a Macintosh or is willing or able to pay Apple prices.
Now if Apple buys Universal, then Apple can offer all sorts of interesting ‘digital rights’ vs. ‘digital restrictions’ to their customers. This is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I suppose we have in between 6 days and 6 months to wait for this new service. While it’s fun to speculate on Apple’s dark secrets, I am beginning to see this site as as mix of “osrumors.com” and “osflamewar.com” more than “osnews.com” and it is becoming less and less worth my attention.
The problems with music industry.
1. Too expensive. movies cost far more to make, yet a music
cd wants to charge almost as much. You get hours of material on one DVD. They make music cds look like a real
rip off.
2. Crummy music thanks to Corportate Radio. Clear Channel
controls 60% of all radio stations in US. It is all
by the numbers. Plus they are one of the biggest
promoters of concerts. It is a nefarious tye-in that
makes the old Payola scandal look tame. Chalk another
“big win” for the wisdom of Deregulation as Dogma.
The old fat cat Dinosaurs Like Jagger, McCartney will
never revolutionize Music again, but they could revolutionize the Music Business. They should set up their own artist owned Digital Label and Distribution
Channel. These big names with the right awareness campaing and the right price most people would not file share.
I am against file sharing of music you do not own.
I am all for fair use of music you do.
If the former hadn’t being abused so much, we wouldn’t be
in danger of losing ther latter.
How sure are we of this and what were Yahoo’s sources? Apple is extremely secretive, and it’s obvious that they didn’t want anything released yet, but rather wanted to keep us waiting (“music to your ears”). So who was the mole? Yahoo doesn’t seem to want to even expose that the informant didn’t want to be exposed.
These are the details that most people believe:
The service is going to be pay per song/album.
It will use some sort of DRM, but probably something trivial. Look at Apple’s iPod. It uses DRM, but it can be circumvented. Apple has always been light on DRM. Their OSs don’t have key codes. Even products like AppleWorks that do come with key codes don’t require you to enter one. The installer will proceed with a blank key code field. Even the 10.1 update CDs provide an example. Apple put in a requirement that they could only update 10.0 installations and not act as a standalone installer, but people found a simple way to get around it. Apple believes in DRM that prevents 90% of people from taking advantage of content, but nothing that would make it so that it might create problems for legit users. If that means that some people are able to exploit it, so be it.
It will be based on the AAC audio format.
It will be compatible with iTunes and the iPod.
Files will likely be 128kbps since AAC is “indistinguishable” from CD Audio at that bitrate – indistinguishable means that trained listeners pick AAC samples as being the CD original as often as they pick the CD original as the CD original. I haven’t AAC for myself.
Windows and other system compatibility is unknown, but it will probably end up like the iPod. If successful, compatibility will be made.
You will be allowed to burn the songs to CD.
Pricing is expected to be $1 per song.
Someone asked whether they would be requiried to pay again for songs that they had purchased on CD. If you want to download them from Apple, you would have to, but couldn’t you just rip them to AAC format and get the exact same effect? Apple can’t tell that you have legally bought a CD for them to let you download extra copies, but you could just rip it like you did for MP3.
This servce won’t attract everyone, but the quality will be so much better than Kazza, Gnutella, or others. The files will be CD quality with reliable and fast downloads. If pricing is $1 per song, it would be a cheap way to buy music. You could create a personalised greatest hits CD for under $20.
Well, we will see what happens on the 28th.
That it will be just real easy to use. That’s what Apple does. Make things easy, intuitive and as glitch free as possible. If you’re a Kazza-using computer wizard, have a lot of knowledge (about what’s available for PCs) and time (to make it all work), then you don’t care much.
These will be the steps to buy music online on the Mac and take it with you:
(1) buy mac and open box, plug it in;
(2) press itunes in the dock, hit some visible button in iTunes for the download service (probably), pick your music and do the single click for purchase (like photos in iPhoto);
(3) plug in your iPod. All songs automatically transferred on plugging in the firewire cable
(4) end of story.
Good luck PC guys playing the denial and minimize game again after this service comes out. ha ha!
Start selling ‘access cards” with a key valid for a certain period of time, allowing you to download a specified number of songs. Redownloading can be done at a slight penalty like a quarter of the original price.
Do not make this $1 per song. Or at least, make full albums much cheaper, like $6 per album. New music could always cost a little more.
The downside could be that Apple could get the big five to get tough on ‘pirate’ networks to increase the value of its networks.
Again, $1 per song is too much. 50c is maybe a good compromise.
“Again, $1 per song is too much. 50c is maybe a good compromise.”
I would tend to agree, in part because you know once these
services gain significant usage, the prices will start creeping up,especially when they notice people are
declining to buy all the songs that are released on the CD.
With all the Apple folks downloading music that they can do what they want with, there is going to be much more music available via Kazaa. More people will be able to enjoy music for a reasonable cost.
People will know this musical renaissance is all due to Apple and use the money they save on music to buy a new Mac.
🙂
I think that $1 per song is quite reasonable as long as you can also purchase the rest of the album at the album price minus any indivisual songs you may have purchased. Think about how much singles cost. $1 seems pretty cheep to me – as long as I can re-dowload any that I loose. Apple is thought to be using a “1-click” system levreging the Amazon patent licence they have for the technology. This would allow them to let you re-download anything that you loose with a username and password.
I don’t think that this will have any effect on Kazza really since the files will have DRM and they won’t be in MP3 format. I know that Kazza can transfer any file type, but c’mon: people look for MP3s on Kazza. There really aren’t any AAC players anyway. Believe me, I have looked for them and most, if not all, are immature and don’t really work (most supporting the older MPEG2 AAC and not the new MPEG4 AAC that Apple will be using). Most jukeboxes choose between WMA and MP3. A couple add Ogg Vorbis support. The RealOne jukebox adds RA8 format, but AAC is extremely rare.
As much as I want to put my CD collection in a format other than the harsh MP3 or the slurry WMA, it just isn’t practical at the moment. Portable players only support WMA and MP3. Ogg Vorbis has the best quality, but it encodes at 1/3 the rate of MP3/WMA/RA8. RA8 encodes extremely quick, but isn’t as high quality as Ogg (although much better than MP3 or WMA) and it doesn’t have the compatibility of WMA and MP3.
Just my rant on the different music formats.