iTunes sales booming: report
p2p news / p2pnet: There’s a story in the Financial Times, one of Britain’s most reputable and influential newspapers, which gives a completely distorted impression of what’s happening in the world of online music.
It could almost have been written by one or other of the Big Four record labels’ many and various PR-cum-enforcement units such as the RIAA, IFPI or BPI.
Reading it, one gets the impression there’s a successful, busy corporate music downloading sector when in fact, the exact opposite is true.
There is as yet no viable corporate music digital music sales business, a reality that’s due: A) to the fact the Big Four are wholesaling grossly overpriced digital music files to the likes of Napster and Apple’s iTunes, forcing them to try to retail the tracks for $1 and more each, depending on which country they’re operating from; and; and, B) that they’re trying to sue consumers into buying these same files.
However, online music lovers are not, for the most part, having any because they’re simply not willing to pay dollars for files which are worth only cents.
Rubbing in the reality, New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer has issued subpoenas to Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI Group PLC and Vivendi Universal to, “discover whether the industry has broken any laws regarding the wholesale pricing of digital music downloads,” says Forbes, interestingly quoting the Financial Times.
“According to figures from Hitwise, the online intelligence company, visits to music download sites, such as Apple’s iTunes Music Store, saw a 50 per cent increase between December 24 and 25,” says the FT.
But a 50% increase over what? Of the various corporate sites supplied by the Big Four, only iTunes can be said to be functional, and it doesn’t really qualify as a dedicated music store. Rather, it’s an iPod promotional site.
The FT is reporting, “downloads already exceed 650,000 and may pass the 1m mark for the first time this holiday season”. Perhaps. But against that, well over one billion files move around the p2p networks not every year, but every month.
Not much more than a year ago, everything the music industry cared to serve up was repeated almost verbatim in the mainstream print and electronic media just as though it was reliable information from reputable sources.
However, with the Sony BMG DRM spyware debacle still echoing loudly, and with major elements of the mainstream media beginning to take notice of the many glaring disparities between what the labels claim and what’s actually happening, things are changing, and fast.
A year ago, blogs were just beginning to take root. Today, they’re firmly locked in as a major communications force, allowing people to exchange unspun versions of events faster than the traditional media can field reports based wholly and solely on self-serving data supplied by the industry.
Meanwhile, Patti Santangelo is the first of 17,000 RIAA sue ‘em all victims to actively challenge the Big Four. Defending herself, she’ll appear before a jury and the music industry will be compelled by the same laws it’s been abusing to publicly explain itself and its actions, past and present.
It’ll be interesting.
Also See:
Financial Times - Music downloads up 50% as iTunes dominates, December 27, 2005
Forbes - Spitzer quizzes Sony, Warner, EMI, Universal on downloads, December 27, 2005
December 28th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
That’s it, we lost. Nice while it lasted. See you all in the iTunes chat room…
December 31st, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I still don’t understand how a dollar a song is gouging…it’s not about the material value of the file, it’s about compensating the various parties involved in its production, and about use value. Is the enjoyment people get from a song really less than a dollar? Why bother with it it all if one doesn’t like it enough to spend a dollar on it?
Not meaning to be antagonistic, it’s just a question that’s always on my mind; I don’t think artists should be reduced to having to use internet tip jars or ugly banner ads to make money, and a buck doesn’t seem like much to ask for a song.
January 3rd, 2006 at 3:28 am
when i plugged my ipod video into a different computer that didnt have itunes it locked up so i restarted the ipod like in the directions and it worked again after i downloaded itunes to that computer and it asked me a question that i didnt pay any attention to and pushed yes and then all the sudden my music was gone off my ipod so you know what happened an if i can get my music back
January 3rd, 2006 at 7:11 am
The trouble is, as a subpar quality file, no mp3’s are not worth a dollar. Some of the artists are wising up to the fact that those locked mp3’s and what the industry is trying to pull with them is costing the artists dollars in their pocket because people realize that the value isn’t there. It isn’t about whether the artists should be paid, its about the product as configured not being worth the money.
Add to it that you are very likely to get a little present with buying music and it isn’t an attractive deal at all. Ask any of those folks that played their xcp discs in their computers and then had to format to clean up the resulting security breaches how much they thought that disc was worth.
Supporting the artist is fine, go see them live where they will actually get the money you pay. When artists start telling their fans how to circumvent DRM to actually enjoy their purchases or when they start apologizing to their fans for what their labels did in protecting the mp3s you wind up with artists like Santana that feel like their fans have been alienated by the labels actions.