Apple to Revolutionize the Record Industry?

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

Just maybe...

www.macminute.com:
Hilary Rosen, chairman and chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said she believed Apple had "struck an industry-friendly balance" with its reported music service. It "has compatibility with a hardware product that is elegant and easy to use," said Rosen, who said she planned to attend Apple's special event later today. "The Apple system has the potential to do for music sales what the Walkman did for the cassette," she added.

We'll see today around 1pm (EST).

[JESTER700]

The walkman wasn't limited to 3% of computer owners, though. the real test will be when the windows version comes out. I hope it does well; this is where the industry should be going.

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

I'm watching the demo jobs is giving right now. Extremely impressive. Windows version will be out by the end of the year. 99 cents a song or $10 an album. Includes download of album artwork. 1 click downloads, built into iTunes... wow, I want it right now!

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

Software is available now... all mac users have to check this out, it's insanely cool. The selection isn't the greatest at the moment, for my taste anyhow, but considering the service is only about 20 minutes old, it's a pretty vast selection. 200,000 tracks.

[glynn]

Paying for MP3's will never work.

There is just no reason to do it, its been done and failed.

Apple usually is the leader in new ideas, and this is an old bad one.

I think this is a bad move for Apple.

[darren wilson]

Before you dismiss it, read this article on Fortune.com.

The record companies have all done it completely wrong, protecting their own interests, but not giving a damn about the user experience or how people actually want to consume music.

Apple has no vested interest in the music industry, so they're delivering something that's totally user-focused. And all the major record companies are behind it. I think the coolest part of it is that there are 30-second previews of every track on the system. Try before you buy! If there's a whole album that's good, i'll probably buy the CD. But for singles, a buck a pop (or $1.50 if they eventually make it available in Canada), it's not bad, and saves me hours of trying to find stuff of questionable quality on LimeWire.

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

Apple isn't offering MP3's, they are using AAC compression, and it sounds considerably better than MP3's at the same bitrate. I've already downloaded an album and a few singles from the iTunes Music Store, and I can attest to this, but I believe a 360 kbps MP3 is what they're using as an equal to a 128k AAC file.

Once the iTunes Store is firmly established (PC users, Increased Library size, people understand it, ect.) the only excuse you'll have for downloading music from "free" p2p clients is that you're unethical.

College student: "I'm not paying $.99 to download a song I can get for free, I'm a poor college student, why should I give the record labels money? They're all rich anyway." (sip $4.95 cup of starbucks)

Seriously folks, this is it. Kiss the mega-stores good-bye. 2-3 years and they'll all be dead. Most complaints I've been hearing about the Apple service are based soley on misunderstanding or misinformation.

[jem7vwh]

I'd like to think it'll work, but I doubt it. If it did, Pay Per View would be the biggest business on the planet. Ethics or not, you can never beat free with affordable. What the companies may want to start doing is voluntarily flooding the net with mp3s of their artists, but having the songs "bumpered'" with commercials. So you have to buy the album to get rid of the ads. It's the same reason radio doesn't crush cd sales, the only thing people hate more than spending money is advertising.

[glynn]

Its not just an arbitrary dismissal, and yea, the record companies have done it all wrong, and still are.

There is no benefit to this system that Liquid Audio hasnt already provided, save the Apple name.

I seriously doubt that there will be a rush to get new Ti books, an airport, an ipod, and cable modem to buy a ****ty mp3, so I don't see the benefit to Apple in the long run, but to spend its rescores on things other than what Apple does best.

The downfall will be that the record companies are behind it. Wonder how badly the artists are going to get shafted on this.

Article at Slashdot.

[jemsite]

Originally Posted by Dave Swift

College student: "I'm not paying $.99 to download a song I can get for free, I'm a poor college student, why should I give the record labels money? They're all rich anyway." (sip $4.95 cup of starbucks).

LOL but dead on correct.

the problem w/ this scheme is that this stands as much a chance of a success as Jobs' post-mac "Next" computers. Noone wants this to happen... and it's likely to be crushed by the machine (good or bad)... glen

[glynn]

Originally Posted by jemsite

LOL but dead on correct.

the problem w/ this scheme is that this stands as much a chance of a success as Jobs' post-mac "Next" computers. Noone wants this to happen... and it's likely to be crushed by the machine (good or bad)... glen

Dude, the NExT was friggn cool! I wanted one so bad when they hit.

Those boxen still look cool to this day.

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

Re: the slashdot article, it's funny that people like to emphasize the limit of 10 burns per playlist. People misunderstand that as you can only burn a song 10 times, not true. You can burn songs as many times as you'd like but you just can't copy a complete CD 11 times. If you need 11 personal copies of a CD you have some organizational issues.

Re: jem7vwh, Radio can't crush CD sales, radio is a commercial for music sales.. That's why you hear the same song 10 times in 2 hours. The song is the advertising. Pay Per View is a completely different medium. People are still buying DVDs because they're priced affoardably and when you buy a new Jim Carey movie you don't expect it to suck for 60 minutes until you get to the 5 or 10 minutes funny minutes. That's what most people expect when they buy a new CD.

PPV is like streaming. Streaming isn't working for music either, i.e. Pressplay. If you could pay $9.99 to download the latest hollywood flick in DVD quality video and audio, save it on your HD for unlimited play, and put it on a $299 portable device to watch anywhere you are, well then I think that would be a hit too.

I'm curious, has anyone here tried this service, and still thinks it will fail? I be really surprised. I admit I'm biased, Apple's innovations amaze me, but if you can find a fault in this service, you're much more cynical than I am or you have some amazing inside info.

[Soup Kitchen Studios]

BTW, Glynn...

The fortune article states that Apple gives an average of $.65 a song to the record companies, I guess that would be $6.50 an album as well. Since there are no production costs, there is definitely room for artists to see their royalty points.

What is exciting to me is that independent artists could eventually distribute their music through a service similar to this. Even right now, we've reduced the record labels to advertising agencies.

[pawel]

Originally Posted by Dave Swift

College student: "I'm not paying $.99 to download a song I can get for free, I'm a poor college student, why should I give the record labels money? They're all rich anyway." (sip $4.95 cup of starbucks)

LOL, very true indeed...

As for the iTunes, I don't know, I still enjoy buying CD's the old way, but I guess this could change with time...I'm not a Mac user though...

[davester1234]

Originally Posted by jem7vwh

I'd like to think it'll work, but I doubt it. If it did, Pay Per View would be the biggest business on the planet. Ethics or not, you can never beat free with affordable.

Wow man, incredible simple but incredibly legitimate point.