p2pnet - rss feed: The Big Music Apple Stomp
p2p news / p2pnet:- The music industry has let Apple get too much power in the digital downloads market, Warner Music “digital strategy chief” Michael Nash told attendees at a wireless telecoms conference.
At least, that’s what a PC Pro story (which may, or may not, have drawn from a story in The Register) has him saying.
Warner has threatened to cut off Apple if Steve Jobs continues to refuse to give ground on iTunes, the piece goes on.
Apple is whining because the members of the Big Four record label cartel, Warner, MI, Universal and Sony BMG, want to boost wholesale rates for their already grotesquely over-priced ‘product’.
iTunes is a self-financing promo vehicle for iPod, at the same time serving as the only viable corporate music service out there.
Pure baloney
The disinterred Napster and Real Networks’ unreal RealPlayer are the only other two Big Music serviced and supplied download applications one hears about. But Napster seems always to be in financial trouble while RealPlayer experiences non-stop, critical, security problems.
The labels claim there are another 297 active corporate music sites available. However, that’s pure Big Four baloney and in any event, available they may be, but neither they nor the iTunes / Napster/ RealPlayer trio have any presence whatsoever in the real world of online music, where the action is all on the p2p networks.
Back to Nash, “What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then?” – PC Pro has him saying. “The industry can say, OK we’ll cut him off” and, in an extremely interesting admission, “very few people buy music from digital downloads”.
Nash’s comments echo those made last week by Warner ceo Edgar Bronfman, “who called for Apple to adopt variable pricing and share out revenues from iPod sales,” adds the story.
Jobs’ response was: the labels are being “greedy”.
“The record companies’ position is based on the dubious argument that digital downloads sell iPods,” adds PC Pro. “In fact all the evidence points to the opposite: that iPod sales have driven demand for downloads. The vast majority of digital music sales are made by iPod owners. Cut off Apple and the labels digital sales will slump.”
Kenneth Hertz
But uh oh!!!!
It seems Nash didn’t make the cut-off threat after all. It was, rather, down to Kenneth Hertz, a lawyer.
In a Reg oops, Andrew Orlowski writes:
“In a story entitled Warners raises decapitation strategy for Apple, we wrongly attributed remarks about Apple’s iTunes Music Store made during a panel discussion at the CTIA show to Warner Music senior vice president Michael Nash.
“These remarks were made by another panelist, Kenneth Hertz, partner at Goldring Hertz and Lichtenstein LLP, a law firm representing major recording industry artists.
“Hertz, not Nash, said – ‘What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then? The industry can say, OK we’ll cut him of - very few people people buy music from digital downloads… [Jobs] will figure out another model … The industry got together and said ‘We don’t want another MTV’. Well, now we’ve got another MTV, in Apple. And we have to deal with it’.
“To Michael and everyone at Warner: we’re really sorry.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
PC Pro - Warner chief threatens to scalp iTunes, September 29, 2005
greedy - Jobs sticks up for music lovers, September 22, 2005
Reg oops - Warner Music’s Michael Nash - no executioner, September 29, 2005
October 1st, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Itunes is more than big enough to sign its own artists and use its reach to millions of music fans to promote their music. That’s what Apple may be forced to do if the big labels won’t budge.
A technology-based record label would likely be much more P2P-friendly, perhaps even going as far as turning the music business upside down by transforming the concept of commercial music into a purely promotional vehicle for driving sales of their hardware products, with sales of tracks being offered more as a ‘bottled water’-type convenience to consumers.
October 1st, 2005 at 4:50 pm
Be careful what you ask for.
If iTunes became a record label, you might find that they imposed unpleasant DRM on their customers, overcharge for the product and ensure that only *their* hardware played the music from *their* artists available from *their* store in *their* format.
Oh. Right. Just like now then.
Face it. Now that Apple are in the media distribution business they are now part of the problem. No matter how much the Apple zealots would rather believe that they’re beloved supplier is just a pour victim of the pigopolist cartel like their customers.
Just Say No To DRM.
October 2nd, 2005 at 6:30 pm
They definitely need to change their business model and adapt to new technologies and realities regarding their monopoly and the changing marketplace - or quickly vanishing monopoly as it were.
However, he record companies only want one way to exist for delivery and/or promotion and one entity to control it…there can be no competition in distribution or promotion, otherwise they’ll lose their obscene profits….
Monopolies tend to fight tooth and nail from opening up their markets to competition, and their allocative efficiency is horrendous when compared to competitive markets, price discrimination can also exist, which for the consumer is terrible (ie Apple charges UK customers more than N American customers for a tune)
Now that the barriers of entry into the distribution and promotion of music, movies etc are quickly vanishing, the entertainment industry is scambling to erect legal barriers through underhanded spin-doctoring, buying politicians, and outright deception and fear-mongering.
TT