iTunes’ billionth sale
p2p news / p2pnet: The mainstream media have gone gaga over the ‘news’ that Apple has pegged its one billionth download with iTunes.
Expect to soon see one or more of the Big Four Organized Music cartel’s enforcement units, with the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) to the fore, using this number to try to further the idea that there’s thriving online corporate music industry.
While Apple boasts of achieving the Big B in sales accumulated since the iTunes launch in 2003, almost three times that number of digital music files circulate between and among computers around the world every month.
A significant proportion could have been sales for the Big Four and their share-holders (and the sites they supply, which is all of them), making them even more obscenely rich than they are already, had they been peddling product at a reasonable price and wooing their customers instead of suing them.
Meanwhile, Apple is at serious odds with EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Vivendi Universal because the labels want to hike their already ridiculous wholesale rates even higher than the current 65 to 80 cents each - and more than that, in some instances.
But the Big Four will still unashamedly use Apple’s numbers to try to give substance to their spurious claims that there’s a whole passel of corporate sites, out there, all pumping music to the eager masses.
And that’s the way the traditional press corps will report it.
At the same time, the fair and unbiased entertainment industry-owned news organs will continue to completely ignore genuinely reportable items which don’t reflect kindly on the Big Four, for example that the labels’ US outfit, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), is suing children. Again.
And that ‘expert’ Big Four technical testimony given in a file sharing case, and which normally would have passed unquestioned, is being discredited with what could have far reaching negative consequences for the labels in their bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign.
Meanwhile, Apple says it’s sold a billion downloads.
It’d be interesting to see an itemized break-down of how that figure was arrived at. But even if it is accurate, it means nothing stacked against the many billions of missed (for the corporate music industry and its adherents) downloads on the public p2p networks, not to mention the other millions, if not billions, shared through the not-so-public sites.
Also See:
thriving - IFPI file sharing report, Janiary 19, 2006
65 to 80 cents each - Mashboxx wraps Sony BMG, June 29, 2005
suing children - RIAA targets Santangelo’s kids, February 16, 2006
February 25th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
my choice
February 25th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
not-so-public sites
hehehe
February 26th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Just Say No To DRM.
Anyone who buys a high priced, low quality, DRM infected file that only plays on one vendor’s platform is stupid.
But like Flies and Sh*t there must be something in it if millions of people do just that!
February 26th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I’d love to see their statistics. I wonder how quickly they hit the billion mark, if in fact they have.
February 27th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Literati X loves P2P simply because lots of truths will be told on this site. As you know, most of the peer to peer networks has been eXterminated in 2005 by the black hand on Capitol Hill and now those free file sharing applications are sleeping with the fishes. . .But on the bright side–if there is any, these sites are becoming corporate-partnership orientated as the big monsters become tamed and move on into the world of 3G mobile solutions. I guess the Phantom Poet cannot be disappointed; Spoken X Digital Media Group loved the rebel inside of the free music downloading revolution, but we also love the Bed-Sty street wise honorary credibility of being apart of the biggest heist in musical history. Not since the old glory days of AL Capone has a single individual left Brooklyn, joined the syndicate and revolutionized the way the cartels break down the cumaltive cuts to the new families on the street. By the big media technocrats’ standard we’re small potatoes. And when
you’re small in my family, you go home with (52) world wide licensing
deals and (191) sublicensing deals at (243) Master Literati de facto
eXclusive copyrights owned unto no one eXcept himself: A special shout out to our homeboy and mentor of “Blueprints”–Jay Z; his
album and talk from the old hood got us busy in Alabama–it’s beautiful country but the cheese don’t funnel down to the black
cats; we were starving down here. . .