iPod as the bad guy
p2p news / p2pnet: Oh dear. In the phony battle for domination of the non-existent corporate online music business, Apple is the bad guy.
None of the touted (by the Big Four Organized Music cartel) music download and downloan sites is worth a light, and none of them is doing any significant business, up to and including Apple’s iTunes, which started life in 2003 as a loss-leader for iPod and which has since become a self-funding iPod promotional tool.
All the action is on the indie sites and p2p networks whose devotees have been turned off the corporate digital offerings by lawsuits, cookie-cutter ‘product’ and serious over-charging.
iPods are among favourite gift items this year. So doesn’t that mean lots of mp3 sales?
Nope, says BusinessWeek Online, because, "iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites. Now legal downloads may be losing their luster. According to Nielsen SoundScan, average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter. Says independent media analyst Richard Greenfield: ‘We’re not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players’."
Losing their luster? Corporate download sites have been dismal failures since Day One.
"Apple, which launched the digital music revolution, may now be holding it back," says the story.
Of course, Apple had absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s evolution, not revolution, and the online music phenomenon was entirely down to Napster - the original p2p file sharing application, that is: not the pale imitation that’s currently losing money hand over fist as it fights in vain become re-established as a corporate site supported and supplied by Organized Music.
"Critics say Apple’s proprietary technology and its refusal to offer more ways to buy or to stray from its rigid 99 cents a song model is dampening legal sales of digital tunes," says the story which, fittingly, has Napster ceo Chris Gorog accusing Apple’s Pod of being the, "villain in the story". You, “have this device consumers love, but they’re being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple. People are bored with that.”
Actually, the vast majority of people want nothing to do the heavily compressed, inferior quality, low-fi digital music files being rented or sold, loaded with DRM, by Napster. Or RealNetworks. Or iTunes. Or any other corporate app.
Who in his or her right mind is going to pay $1 and more for a Big Music track?
The "Music labels say they’d sell and earn more by offering an old Uriah Heep tune for 39 cents and a new Usher track for $1.29," says Business Week, quoting David Rosenblum, "an 18-year-old political philosophy major at Harvard University and a singer who performs as Dev Avidon" as saying, "I’d be the kind of guy looking for older music at a lower price."
Forty cents is stretching it a bit but, depending on whether or not the labels open their catalogues, particularly where the classics are concerned, it might get the ball rolling for a new ‘oldies’ market. But forget $1.30 for the current formulaic garbage they’re churning out.
"So will Jobs change his tune? Not unless he has to," adds the story. "Apple can barely keep up with demand for iPods, which reap as much as 25% gross margins, vs. minimal profits for each iTunes track. So right now there’s no reason for the company to alter the way it sells music or make its player compatible with other services. But if download sales don’t bounce back, music companies could start looking beyond Cupertino for answers."
Corporate downloads haven’t happened, not even nearly, so they can hardly bounce back.
Meanwhile, "Looking beyond Cupertino" means revising current business models to take into account we’re now in the 21st century where ‘consumers’ have become free-choosing customers, again, and where digital and not physical media are the order of the day.
And where the customer is always right.
Also read:-
BusinessWeek Online - Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz , December 19, 2005, issue
December 13th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
“And where the customer is always right.”
except where the media cartels are concerned it’s:
The customer is always a criminal.
December 14th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
I think I’m pretty average when it comes to music, except when it comes to ripping CD’s in which case I’ll always use a lossless format. That way I can convert sa many times I want. Right now I have everything in Vorbis for the Rio Karma I own. If I decide to get an iPod some day, I can easily convert those lossless files to AAC without any loss of quality. But I digress. What I wanted to say is that if they increased the quality of their offering, and lowered the price to a more reasonable level, I’d be willing to buy their wares even if it meant DRM infection. Until then I won’t touch the stuff, and I’m sure I’m not any different to the rest of the people out there.
December 15th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
“…even if it meant DRM infection”
What good is audio/video quality when the file refuses to play because the site doesn’t support your player, or you can only play it a certain number of times, or it’s a tethered rental that goes poof when the site goes out of business or if you stop paying, or when they decide just to take it away to create artificial scarecity, or you’ve move to the wrong region, or any number of other rediculous reasons they make up to take things away. NO DRM!