Yahoo battles iTunes
p2pnet.net News:- It’s like this: the corporations make a decision based on pre-ordained, inflexible business models and then cram it down the throats of ‘consumers’ – whether the consumers like, or want, it or not.
Napster II recently launched an mp3 rental service under which punters are expected to pay $15 a month for dumbed-down copies of existing Big Music CD/DVD tracks. RealNetworks followed suit and now Yahoo is doing the same, except it’s renting its tracks at half the going rate.
But it doesn’t matter if it’s $15 or even much lower because the music literally dies as soon as punters stop paying their monthly rental rates.
Yahoo’s $7 a month offer is an obvious loss leader (loss because the Big Music cartel demands exorbitant wholesale rates for each track) to wean the handful of buyers (relatively speaking) away from Apple’s iTunes.
The mainstream media always trumpet the latest happenings in the flimsy world of corporate music ‘services’ as though they reflect reality. However, at the moment, there is no online music business. Apple’s iTunes, with its locked-down music, is as close as it gets.
Its only competition when it comes to services for which people pay hard cash is AllofMP3.com, a singular Russian operation that’s selling tracks for pennies instead of dollars, and which Big Music is doing its best to close down.
But even this doesn’t even begin to match up to what’s happening on the p2p networks and other non-corporate vehicles through which the vast majority people, tired of being duped and treated as fools, get their music, with the labels screaming ‘FOUL’ and using their RIAA (Recording Industry of America) to launch legal actions against customers as fast as they can go.
And as they sue music lovers, they similarly screw their own music industry clients and ‘partners’ by demanding an out-of-sight 65 to 72 cents for ‘product’ even ex-RIAA boss Hilary Rosen admits “sucks”.
It’s a ridiculous picture. But that’s the way it is.
CNET News says the introduction of the Yahoo service is kicking off a “digital music price war that could put rival subscription services in a painful squeeze,” according to analysts.
It might indeed. But no one beyond the cartel, RealNetworks, Napster II, the analysts and, of course, the mainstream media, will give a damn.
One day, perhaps, the world press corps will finally tell the story as it really is instead of repeating self-serving corporate press releases as though they reflect reality.
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See:-
close as it gets – iTunes in the real world, May 10, 2005
close down – Big Music goes after AllofMP3, p2pnet, February 24, 2005
out-of-sight – MP3s suck: Hilary Rosen, p2pnet, May 10, 2005
CNET News – Price wars looming for digital music?, May 10, 2005
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