At an Apple financial analyst conference on Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April. As iTMS is the leading download service, with 80 per cent market share (or so Jobs claimed), where’s your 99 cents per song going? “Most of the money goes to the music companies,” admitted Jobs. “We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it’s not a money maker,” he said, candidly.
On other multimedia news, the Federal Communications Commission took a historic step this week toward limiting piracy of digital television signals, enacting regulations that will affect not only consumer-electronics manufacturers, but Silicon Valley companies as well. Read an interesting commentary on the issue by Scot Hacker.
Didn’t we already know this? This has been reported before, but even without anyone telling me, I’d have to figure that between the greedy RIAA and the low 99c price tag, profit margins would be tight.
iTMS is just a marketing device for iPods anyhow.
Not to the musicians, their widows, or their orphaned children, you can bet your life on that.
…but somebody may be able to get himself a better boat, between calls to high-priced lawyers and “pocket politicians.”
When do we wake up? When do the right people go to prison? When do the people who actually *work* in this U S of A get the credit?
Sorry, but 99 cents per song won’t cut it. With many CD’s selling 15 tracks, that still makes the price of a full album $15. I don’t like to spend more than $12 for an album and for that much money, I want the liner notes and art as well as the rest of the packaging.
Even worse than the price is the fact that I can not choose the quality of the songs for download. I enjoy using LAME to encode high quality variable bit rate MP3’s that are superior to iTunes’ 128kbps constant bit rate audio files. Until companies make it a point to offer higher-quality audio files, I will steer clear of these online services.
“On other multimedia news, the Federal Communications Commission took a historic step this week toward limiting piracy of digital television signals, enacting regulations that will affect not only consumer-electronics manufacturers, but Silicon Valley companies as well.”
That’s just great. The government will force everyone to upgrade to HDTV by 2006 and then they will take away our ability to simply record shows like we did with VCR’s. Of course, you will still be able to record through an analog signal, but that defeats the point of having a digital signal through HDTV. The only consolation is that it will probably be easy to find ways around this restriction.
I didn’t know about this, but I’m not surprised at all. And I’ll bet that precious little, if any of the money goes to the artists. Long before Phil Spector perfected the art, record companies have been screwing artists out of royalties. As Vanilla Ice said once during an interview “If anybody in this business tells you they haven’t been screwed, they’re a liar”. By paying for the songs, we’re not supporting the artists; we’re supporting the record companies who are using Enron-type accounting to cheat the artists out of most of their royalties. I’m not advocating illegal downloading; but you need to realize what really happens to your money when you pay for a song or buy a CD.
“Sorry, but 99 cents per song won’t cut it. With many CD’s selling 15 tracks, that still makes the price of a full album $15. I don’t like to spend more than $12 for an album and for that much money, I want the liner notes and art as well as the rest of the packaging.
Even worse than the price is the fact that I can not choose the quality of the songs for download. I enjoy using LAME to encode high quality variable bit rate MP3’s that are superior to iTunes’ 128kbps constant bit rate audio files. Until companies make it a point to offer higher-quality audio files, I will steer clear of these online services. ”
When you buy the whole album it’s $10, not $1 a song, unless there are less then 10 songs, then it’s $1 a song. The beauty is mixing and matching. These days it’s rare to find a whole album worth listening to, so being able to buy one or two songs and not the rest is a big help.
As for the encoding, 128 bit is low for an MP3, which is why they use AAC.
Since Apple aren’t making money on it and they have 80% of legal sales how are these other services going to make it? Apple makes their cash back on iPods and possible Mac sales. Why are so many jumping into this money pit?
@orangtool,
Nobody said anythign about the ability to record going away. What will happen is your ability to DISTRIBUTE these recordings. Now, some things like PPV will likely block any recording whatsoever but that’s the point, you pay per view.
@phil hall
Yeah, I feel so sorry for Vanilla Ice. Poor guy got millions for making crappy music. Yeah, the RIAA really screwed him. I think it is you who needs to learn what really happens to the money as well as how record contracts work, how the industry advances money to artists on the basis that they will be paid back in full and how most musicians don’t make any money because they are simply not that good or that marketable.
go to their Concerts when they are in town. Bands are always on Tour and travelling because this is their cash crop. If you ever hear about news of a successful tour, you hear about certain millions earned. And artists are proud to announce it because it’s their own not the bastard record companies. (I do like records). What’s funny is that when Napster first came out, Record sales went up. I mean now people had the ability to listen to music before they purchased the CD, which gives huge benefits no matter what people say.
Record companies are greedy and saw a way to gain even more cash, now that sales are up because of an illegal activity they can demand royalties on anything they see fit.
What we need is to not fight the RIAA directly, but have an alternative way of distributing music. Ohh, wait here, don’t we have that internet thing. Why do we need RIAA anyways, there is VERY little music i’ve seen from the ‘professional’ music distributers that is worth even 99 cents. There are many bands that are really good, but not ‘commercially friendly’ enough for the RIAA goons.
Why not put 2 and 2 together and have an alternative way for both REAL musicians to distribute content and music lovers to get some actual QUALITY material. That little band in Nebraska that rocks, but doesn’t sound enough like blink 182 for the marketing execs, would be thrilled to sell their tracks for 25 cents apiece or less.
This could be a LEGAL way to both distribute good music and actually support the musicians.
Howdy,
It is even worse than organgtool suggests. If you understand what they are setting up, you’ll realize that the consumer is even going to lose the right to fast forward through commercials. This is a bad decision on the FCC’s part. THis was not about piracy. It is about control.
Good day,
The Register article and all the comments (so far) are ignoring the fact that Apple has deals with over 200 independent record labels. Apple is not simply giving the RIAA another distribution method — they are letting others have their piece of the pie too. And the are paying the smaller labels the same amount per track that they pay the ‘big 5.’ In fact, CDBaby.com has partnerships with Apple and several other music download services, and they will distribute ANYONE’S music. So don’t bitch about the RIAA controlling this, or Apple, Napster or Rhapsody playing to their whims. If the consumers want independent music, they can buy it. No one forces you to buy major label music. If you listen to commercial radio, then you don’t have many options… but that’s another story.
Doh. It doesn’t solve the problem of the hierarchy between artists earning less, the middle persons of record companies and the RIAA, and the massive copying of music listeners.
First let me tell you a story about the situation here in the Netherlands and some recent news. Tim Kuik of the organisation ”Brein” (means: Brain), an organisation which was started by members of BUMA/Stemra (Dutch RIAA) is regulary in the news. He recently had a talk on this radio called VPRO in which he said they’re not actively busy with prosecuting people like the RIAA does. Why not? He said he wants legal services on the internet first. Now on 11 oktober the ISP Xs4all, a liberal ISP which is pro-freespeech, had the 10-year-existing party about copyright, called Copy=Right? Along with a full program with debates, speeches and so on about this subject the plan was to play copyrighted music which was authorized by the artists. However Tim Kuik came in, and the party was over. They weren’t authorized to play this music by Brein! Now a few days ago the ISP called Chello has started a sort an Itunes-alike (but more expensive). Exactly what Tim Kuik wants. You bett the RIAA wants exactly the same thing.
You bett that when this becomes popular, artists/record companies and the RIAA will like to distribute their music via the internet only _with_ DRM and eventually Longhorn “1984” Palladium. I ask you: who’ll be laughing then?
What it does try to solve is the copy problem in an evolutionary, non-radical way. Slowly but surely they’ll try to blow away the copying ”pirates”. But that’s not a problem according to everyone.
The problem according to me is that some popular artists receive millions, the RIAA binds the artists to themselves, and the fact a creative work is binded by a record company which is then sold to individuals instead of the create work sold to the world. In order to try to change this i listen to non-RIAA music (which is more nice anyway
, share this via P2P, and donate to several small artists and radio’s i like.
Think before you use these services. Apple’s ‘Think Different’ has a meaning, you know.
It sounds like you did not read the articles cited. The first article contains the following info:
Watson, who says Digital Connection will stop selling its card after the FCC’s deadline, said the order “totally eliminates the ability to send that (HDTV) data over a PCI bus to a Firewire port or to a digital VHS recorder–except in analog format.”
While many people will argue that this is alright since consumers will be still be able to make analog recordings as is done today, this measure hurts the computer industry in at least two ways:
1. As the CNET article mentions, this completely prevents the growth of the recording device industry just so that the MPAA can prevent piracy. Of course, this is stupid considering that most movies are pirated before the movie is released in theaters, let alone broadcast on television.
2. Recording an analog signal is much more difficult because the video stream must be encoded to a file format on the fly, such as an AVI or MJPEG file. However, recording a digital HDTV could be as simple as dumping the bits in the incoming video stream to a hard drive, DVD-recorder, or any other digital storage device.
This is just another reminder that we must be vigilant of the tactics the RIAA and the MPAA are using to slowly take away our fair use rights.
Alright, before I start this post, I just want to say that I dispise the RIAA, and I think they should be boycotted in the form of people not buying CDs produced by RIAA member recording artists.
That being said, you need to stop using the argument that the artists are getting screwed. They may get only 25 cents (this can vary from 10 cents to 50 cents, depending on the artist) per CD. But lets say you are a decent artist, and your album goes platinum (100,000 units). Well that’s $25,000. Now, you have the record company backing your music and your image. They advertise for you, and get you known. Now you can go on tour, and that’s where you make your millions. You can stick your face on a shirt, or a lunchbox, or whatever, and that’s even more money. Maybe you endorse Coke. Maybe you get another $2 million for that. None of those millions would have been possible without the publicity you received, via your recording company.
Also, contrast a music artist to an engineer at IBM. Maybe you are a really smart engineer, and you invent a really great technology that IBM patents as its own and it generates them $1 billion dollars a year. How much of that $1 billion do you get? $100 million? $1 million? No, probably more around $50,000-100,000, because that is what you get paid at IBM. Its really no different that music artists. Why doesn’t anyone complain about that? Maybe because, just like engineers at IBM, music artists really aren’t so bad off as they like to make it look like.
The bottom line is, the RIAA ripping people off selling CDs for $17 each is fine. Its their CD, their prerogative. They’re obviously making money, so more power to them. However, when they start having special laws made for them so that they can hack into users’ computers, and they start suing 12 year old girls for $100,000 (and then extorting them by saying give us $3,000 and we’ll call it even), they have overstepped their boundaries.
Stop buying their CDs, you morons. And not only that (because I’m sure most of you just download your MP3s like you should), but tell your friends not to. MOST importantly, tell your stupid 13 year old daughter not to buy any more CDs, since they are the ones keeping the RIAA in business. The RIAA spends about 90% of its advertising money on girls aged 12-18, because they get about 80% of their income from them. If you are the parent of a girl in that age bracket, or are a friend of a girl in that age bracket, or ARE a girl in that age bracket (on osnews.com?!), for the love of God, tell them (or yourself) to stop buying CDs! You don’t need government legislation, you don’t need to go to the courts! STOP BUYING CDs! You could collapse the RIAA in one year if their sales went down 50%. The only reason the RIAA is still around is because people still want them around, in the form of continuing to buy CDs. STOP IT!
Hmmm, think about it. If their is full DRM control on all media (music, movies, books) and therefore no possible way to gaurantee the survival of the media, what happens in 20, 50 or a hundred years to that media. By that time original media, or the devices to use them will not be around. Really great, but not so commercially successful works (Nick Drake comes to mind) may totally vanish. Total copy control robs us of our culture, it is the most immoral invention of modern times.
These days it’s rare to find a whole album worth listening to, so being able to buy one or two songs and not the rest is a big help.
I think it is you who needs to learn what really happens to the money as well as how record contracts work, how the industry advances money to artists on the basis that they will be paid back in full and how most musicians don’t make any money because they are simply not that good or that marketable.
I think that there is a similar problem with each of your arguments, as both of you have allowed your opinions on the music of today get in the way of the fact that artists are getting the short end of the stick in this new setup. But I’ll let mine get in the way too: there are so many great artists putting out amazing music these days, that if I ever go bankrupt, it’ll be because I couldn’t hold back from buying one more new release. Maybe if you got off Launchcast and turned on your college radio stations, you’d realize that there’s more out there than the Top 40. I’m all about the technology, but not if an artist that I feel a connection to is getting reemed. At least if someone downloads a few songs off of KaZaa they might feel obligated to buy the album, but if they’ve already paid for the songs, then that obligation won’t exist.
Good post, Hexydes.
People will still want music. Maybe a ‘RIAA free’ sticker on the front of non-affiliated albums/downloads. I still think artists (not most of these celebrity hacks) deserve compensation.
Copyprotection has been bastardized. Copyrights were put in place originally to allow original content creators (not executives mind you, doesn’t say anything about executives) to be compensated for a LIMITED time, allowing people fair use of this material. The point of all that was to avoid the Writer’s Guild, or whatever the heck it was called, that was in England that maintained unlimited ownership of all published materials and could publish or not publish at their discretion. (Please correct me if I am inaccurate here, this is from memory.)
The path we’re going seems suspiciously like this. The laws of copyrights may be one of the most important disputes we have in our lifetime for our society.
If the Music industry thinks they can continue to charge too much for music, online services will sink and a new Kazza will emerge.
I don’t pay for the content on this site but the fact that when my mouse hovers over the word “piracy” I’m prompted to report piracy to the BSA is a little creepy. At least make the hyperlinks the same color as the main text and lose the underline. I assume this is a response to all of us using popup blockers but whatever happened to good old banners?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33864.html
I completely agree about copyrights. Its gotten way out of hand. It was originally enacted so that people who created original material could profit off of their work for a suitable amount of time (14 years, plus a possible extra 14 years if the author so wished). I am FINE with that. Good. 30 years. If you want to be the sole prorietor of your work that you created for 30 years, good.
Then it was extended. And extended. And extended and extended and extended……until we’re now at the wonderful point of something can be copyrighted for the entire duration of the artist’s life, plus 70 years after they die.
I mean, Jesus. If somone creates something when they are 20 years old (like many artists do), and they live to be 70 years old (which is nothing special today), that is 120 years from the date of creation before that work becomes public domain. The problem is that this wasn’t done for individual creators, it was done for corporations. Disney had a key role in the extension of the existing copyright law in 1998 because their main man, Mickey Mouse, was due to enter public domain in 2003. They had the law skewed, and now he won’t be open until 2023 (at which point in time I’m sure they will be in courts again).
You can read all of this here:
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/copyright.html
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/8/kaminer-w.html
By the way, I feel sick that I just posted a link to a so obviously Democratic-slanted site (in the second link), but the author does do a good job of presenting a pretty fairly balanced view of copyright law. They recognize that people need to make money, otherwise they will have no incentive to create (*cough*Communism*cough*). But they also recognize how ridiculous it is to lock things out of the public domain for a century and a half.
“Also, contrast a music artist to an engineer at IBM. Maybe you are a really smart engineer, and you invent a really great technology that IBM patents as its own and it generates them $1 billion dollars a year. How much of that $1 billion do you get? $100 million? $1 million? No, probably more around $50,000-100,000, because that is what you get paid at IBM. Its really no different that music artists. Why doesn’t anyone complain about that?”
Hmm an ok analogy. Yes, some people who know complain about that.
There are solutions to that one. Free Software doesn’t work like proprietary software. There’s also a difference: Free Software comes with source. Music mostly doesn’t, but some is in the form of electronic/house music. We had a ”free” music scene in the 90’s: the modscene/demoscene, closely related to the warezscene during that time. It still currently exists somehow.
The communisn argument is pure FUD. There are other ”left” alternatives to ”Russian-communism”. Russian-communism was in fact an authorian dictatorship. If you do read more about the subject, you’ll notice that there was a lot more going during that time in Russia, but some things didn’t work out.
Uh. There isn’t incentive to create in the Free Software scene? Oh sure there is. Lots of WM’s, for example. Things get improved. People do their own thing. Calling Free Software communism is yet another FUD argument.
For example check out the anarchism FAQ: http://www.infoshop.org/faq it contains historical references.
About copyright there’s also a copyright/P2P site, with a Wiki. Check out iA: http://www.infoanarchy.org
Then there’s this nice sticker ”when you pirate MP3 you’re downloading communism” which was around on the LAME site.
I’m supprised nobody has corrected this yet:
“Sorry, but 99 cents per song won’t cut it. With many CD’s selling 15 tracks, that still makes the price of a full album $15.”
Albums typically (though not always) on the iTunes music store are $9.99 regardless of the number of songs on the CD.
Two things.
Macrovision, and what’s on TV that’s worth watching? Must be something else people wouldn’t be up in arms about the broadcast flag? Same with music.
Free software is different from music/books/movies however.
* For one, software often has a practical use, art, or media exists for its own sake.
* Software, particularly open source, is a group project. Art is often a solo project. Movies, and music are often created by groups, but by an exclusive group. You can’t just go up to Neil Young and say your going to contribute to his band.
* Software is an evolving entity. Media is created and remains static (Unless of cource this is Star Wars, or the Exorcist)
Free software is a woderful thing, it is just inherently different than other media.
I despise the RIAA and their tactics as much as the next guy, but the artists have a hand to play in this mess as well.
Advice for $tarry-eyed recording artists everywhere: If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign the contract.
“Advice for $tarry-eyed recording artists everywhere: If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign the contract.”
Damn straight.
Albums typically (though not always) on the iTunes music store are $9.99 regardless of the number of songs on the CD.
ok, so most albums are 9.99 (I don’t know, I looked through the music store and found that they didn’t have much I was interested in unless I already had it). That still means that if you’re buying a song here and there you’ve spent $15 for 15 songs. You can chalk it up to the price of the ability to actually do that, but in the end it means that it’s no cheaper than buying CDs, and what you get is actually worth less than a CD because the quality is lower, the media less permanent, and you get none of the extras.
The 2 CDs I bought in the last week were $12 and $15, and the $15 CD I bought at the concert, with all of the band members’ signatures on the cover. Neither album is available on the iTunes Music Service, neither is on an RIAA label, and neither of them is copy protected (and all of the songs now reside on my hard drive at home as mp3s since I ripped them while I was listening to them for the first time). My music purchases have really dropped off in the last couple of years, but despite (or maybe because of) maybe 5% of the music I’ve bought in that time being RIAA material, I’ve still managed to pick up quite a lot of good music, both new and (slightly) older material.
The only time I buy a CD for more than $13, though, is when I’m at a concert and/or there’s something significant to make it worth more (signatures are almost enough, but rare to come across outside of concerts anyway). $10/album may seem like a good deal, but remember that you’re not getting the album. For some of us, there’s more to it than just the music, and personally, a downloaded file, even burned to a CD-R, just doesn’t feel as permanent as a purchased CD. Frankly, I think the RIAA is pushing the wrong angle here, they need to make people aware that CDs (and now DVDs) have higher quality audio than the majority of downloads, and the music on iTunes and other music services should reflect that difference in quality. Otherwise, we’re just giving up all of the good things about purchased music in favour of a medium that basically costs them less and gives us less for our money. The RIAA isn’t even pulling any of the publishing burden with these services.
ok, so most albums are 9.99 (I don’t know, I looked through the music store and found that they didn’t have much I was interested in unless I already had it). That still means that if you’re buying a song here and there you’ve spent $15 for 15 songs. You can chalk it up to the price of the ability to actually do that, but in the end it means that it’s no cheaper than buying CDs
You really think so? I really like the Johnny Hates Jazz song “Shattered Dreams”, but I don’t want to buy the whole “Turn Back the Clock” album put out by this one hit wonder. Unfortunately, with disc-based media this is my only choice, and I’m looking at spending $10 for a single song. The iTunes music store lets me get just the song I want for $1. Seems cheaper than buying CDs to me.
That Register article was about the most bizarre thing I’ve read at OS News. OK, Apple won’t make tons of money on the iTunes music store. Interesting, but not evil.
The author’s rant was ridiculous. You could make sort of a point that the music companies cut shouldn’t be as large as it used to be, and that Apple should get more because it is the distribution medium. But the author described some kind of socialist paradise, where world government subsidized the arts for everyone with a flat tax approach.
“compulsory licensing resolve two real social nasties without each side losing face. A flat tax is simply the easiest way of getting rid of the problem: we all get to swap music, and all the artists get paid.
We all know how well the government-sponsered arts are received. Perhaps artists could sit before congressional sub-committees and audition for the opportunity to be placed on government payrolls, and receive a flat salary regardless of how many downloads they recieve.
And he says ‘support is growing’ for such an idea. What is he talking about. I’ve never heard it discussed. Were we on the verge of that happening, and then that “nasty”, “nervous kind of character”, Steve Jobs through it all away?
That is just irrational. He’s complaining that Apple computer respected the law and the concept of intellectual property.
Implementing a global sharing system is not going to be that hard. Collect a flat fee from everyone who want to use it. Use FLAC (with lossy MP3 as a backup for those who can’t or don’t want to use FLAC). Allow each downloader to get whatever they want, and choose which artists in which proportion get their money. This is going to work a lot better then a scheme in which artists get 25 cents per album.
You’ll get a real working free market.
It’s not hard if you ignore that other’s own the distribution rights. But if you work within the law, it’s more complex.
“Advice for $tarry-eyed recording artists everywhere: If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign the contract.”
The problem is that musicians need to eat, and the fastest way to survive INITIALLY (before becoming well-known) is to join recording agencies such as the RIAA.
“The problem is that musicians need to eat, and the fastest way to survive INITIALLY (before becoming well-known) is to join recording agencies such as the RIAA.”
Well that kind of shoots down the “The Internet is your saviour” business model, that some P2P’ers trot out. And lest people in their infinite geekdom forget. A LOT of people don’t have/want either computers or the Internet.
BTW One can always sign with an independent group, but then that validates the “division of labour” business model, that the entertainment giants use.
Guess one can’t win.
I agree. They are not the same. First of all i named the mod scene to be more free (speech) software a-like; not the whole music scene. Plus i never claimed they are the same. According to me they have things in common, though.
“* For one, software often has a practical use, art, or media exists for its own sake.”
I can think of several practical usage of art/media. Emotions (ie. fun). Interesting to learn (ie. documentary). Creates atmosphere on a party. They’re both practical, but not in the very same way.
Regarding pictures, if is made with ”hardware” or ”technical” programs, it can hypothetically become ”open source” if the way it’s build up is open, too. I think the layers in Photoshop is an example, i’m not sure. That would mean people can use it to adjust it according to their own opinion and give it back in such way either with the same ”build up” or as a simple image (”closed” source). From an education point of view this is imo highly interesting.
“* Software, particularly open source, is a group project. Art is often a solo project.”
What about covers? What about mods by several people? What about remixing?
It has some things in common, but they’re not the same. Especially the ”hardware” and ”technical” side of music can be a collobrative effort for sure. Think about a remix in trance music. It happens a lot, but only a small group of elite DJ’s can do so. Not everybody can do so.
“Movies, and music are often created by groups, but by an exclusive group.”
What makes you think this cannot be done otherwise? With a bigger group of unselected individuals?
“Software is an evolving entity. Media is created and remains static”
Your 2nd statement is imo not a fact, rather a generalisation. See my earlier above examples.
Ultimately, it doesn’t shove up my actual points i made using free software _as example_, nor it doesn’t proof a gift-economy model doesn’t work.
all it is is a piece of data that comes in the signal. and all the rule says is that Box makers MUST SEE the bit. what they do with it (let you record the show, let you burn the show to a DVD, let you place it on VHS, let you encode it into a DRMed file for your PC viewing pleasure) is up to the box maker, all they need to do is make sure that there are proper precautions taken that make it hard to just copy the file to DiVx and place it on Kazza.
to those who say this is a slippery slope, it takes an act of congress to mandate that copyright will be changed to make sure that home users can not time shift and move media (since there are acts of congress in place that secure these rights and abilities). having a copyright flag will not make it any easier to pass such legislation since such a law could have been passed with out such a flag and congress would not have cared. all the flag does is allow Electronic box makers to be able to fall in line with current copyright laws and the technological times we live in (cable modems and Kazza)
I have been downloading a lot of music over the last few months. Not once has it violated RIAA copyrights. Why, because I wouldn’t listen to their garbage. It all comes from the bands own sites or from the sites of their indie labels.
A large part of of the decline in in record sales by RIAA labels is that less and less people want to listen to the dreck they produce so it doesn’t get bought. I am sure this is a much bigger reason for their sales losses yhan P2P downloads.
For the most part it’s $.99 per song and then $9.99 per album, with very few exceptions. So you are still paying LESS. Plus there is no sales tax.
The whole concept of buying just the one song you like off that 15 song album for $.99 instead of buying the whole album for $15.00 is the whole idea.
It’s not hard if you ignore that other’s own the distribution rights. But if you work within the law, it’s more complex.
How can one build a better music distribution system within copyright laws written by marionettes of older music distribution system that doesn’t want to fade away? You can’t win when playing by their rules.
This isn’t flamebait but I recall a lot of people on this saying how Apple would make a huge amount of money from this venture. Reality is they are making nothing except iPod sales.
Hmph, a post that is actually pretty relevant to the article.
This venture is costing Apple to run, rather than them making money from it. Sure, for a while it may increase iPod sales, but that will only last so long. Once people hav an iPod, why do they need to run out and buy more? Not to mention, running the service actually drops the profit margin from the iPod sale by at least a little bit. I don’t think this will be able to continue for a long time without Apple getting a bit more out of the deal.
If I were an Apple shareholder, I would definitely want to see some changes made.
For the most part it’s $.99 per song and then $9.99 per album, with very few exceptions. So you are still paying LESS. Plus there is no sales tax.
You also get less: compressed music, no disc, no artwork/booklet. If real cd’s would cost $10 I would consider buying them again. I spend way to much money on them in the past…