iTunes 8.2.1 now available for download - Page 5

No one is stopping Palm from writing their own software for OSX that will synch with their phones. It's not up to Apple to make iTunes compatible with every phone and digital music device out there. Feeling "monopolistic" is your opinion only, there's no truth to it at all.


That is not an accurate comparison. If Palm had bothered to create a software called "PreTunes" for Mac OSX and Apple prevented that software from running in OSX, that would be comparable to your MS example above.

I will agree and say that Apple does effectively have a monopoly on media downloads. The misconception that seems to continue, is that a monopoly is illegal. Monopolies that have been earned through fair and open competition are not illegal. What is illegal is abuse of a monopolistic position to limit competition.

If by basic features you mean store and manage music files. Other than that iTunes today is radically different from what SoundJam was 10 years ago.

iTunes is more or less break even for Apple, they do make a small profit from it, but its not intended to be a profit center. Apple makes its money from selling iPods and iPhones.

You answered your own question. Palm Pre users have other choices they are not forced to use iTunes at all. They want to use iTunes because it is the most popular media service.

What are you basing this on? There are lots of other alternatives to iTunes. Amazon, Best Buy, Microsoft, Rhapsody and MP3.com are just a few that come to mind. iTunes may be the most popular, but, it's hardly a monopoly.

Your kinda missing the point.

Palm has hired (poached) a load of Apple iPod employees and rather than create their own sync software or even a plug-in they thought they would be a bunch of smug pricks and by using their insider knowledge of how the iPods work they enabled syncing with iTunes natively by making the Pre appear to itunes like an iPod. Plenty of other companies have had the decency to write their own sync programs and plug-ins. Why should it be any different for Palm?

Apple has closed this loophole and now they are the bad guy? Palm had to borrow 400 million dollars to save their asses and have poached talent from Apple to rush out a half assed piece of hardware.

In 2008, 87% of US digital downloads were from iTunes, 16% from Amazon, everyone else makes up the rest. The iPod holds roughly 70% of the mp3 market. Because of iTunes dominance Apple was able to force 99 cents as the standard single price, and music labels had no leverage to change the price. Because of iPod popularity and dominance has forced competitors to design their players around the functionality of the iPod. That effectively is a monopoly.

Have they also demanded that the content can only be synced to iPods? Thanks for dodging my central question: Why did Apple not specify a way to sync with iTunes while retaining the DRM protection? Since iTunes was the only way of getting your music on a music player they pretty much abused their monopoly to shut out competitors on the player market.


Sure I do, it's just irrelevant. Your long-winded rant afterwards does not take into account that there is no coupling between content and output device other than that the output device has to fulfil some specifications.


It is possible *now* and only for music. For the longest time iTunes was the only way to get protected music onto players and, surprise, it only worked with Apple provided players. Since Apple had a monopoly in both the player as well as the content seller market it was just a matter of time before lawsuits against them would have started. Removing the copy protection from the music sure did take the wind out of such endeavours sails.

Apple did address the reason they did not license Fairlplay DRM. Apple is under contractual obligation to keep Fairplay secure and unbroken. Apple felt the most effective way to abide by this obligation was not licensing Fairplay out, where it is out of their control and is more difficult to ensure it remains unbroken. Microsoft's Plays For Sure which was licensed widely and had been broken on a number of occasions.



The problem with this line of thinking is that you cannot be accused of having a monopoly over your own product. Apple is under no obligation to share iTunes or the iPod with anyone else.

The entire time of iTunes and iPod there have been other options that consumers were free to choose. Outside of free choice there has been no reason anyone has had to use iPod or iTunes. Apple fairly and freely beat everyone else in this market there is no breach of antitrust.

Apple was the market leader and most successful innovator in online digital music distribution, so, it's no surprise they are the most popular. But, being popular is not the same as a monopoly.

That's a bug in Flash itself. Flash always was a hog.

I can't wait till Youtube drops Flash. Some other video sites are already practicing with HTML5 versions of their site.

Bad move by Apple I would say. Now they just look like Microsoft using there advantage as the PC and OS maker to give them an advantage over things connecting to it.

Not only that they've also made themselves look like they could be scared of the Pre. It's like all the things you read about Microsoft spending money on pointless ad campaigns that lead to reports bringing more attention to Apple. Apple blocking the Pre is just going to lead to loads of reports on them doing it, which will just fuel hatred for them and support for the Pre.

I would disagree, you can't buy a Mac without iTunes installed on it. This effectively makes iTunes part of the OS. So it is in effect restricting part of the machine to only work with Apple hardware.

It's seems very very unlikely that the Pre could have been stopped from syncing if Palm had made it identify itself the same way as an iPOD does. It seems a lot more likely apple have built in an extra check that would recognize part of the Pre and block that.

That argument assumes that Apple also has a monopoly in operating systems or PCs, but, they are FAR from that.

But it's an artificial category right now. It's not a monopoly since mist people don't purchase their music that way yet. If a company has a large majority of a fairly small minority of a category, that's not a monopoly.

The category is music sales.

It's possible that some stores had a monopoly in selling cassette recordings, so what?

I don't feel comfortable with people making up categories that aren't considered to be material to the overall market.

Let's give it another four or five years and see what happens. Right now, Apple has no monopoly in this.

They do have a monopoly in handheld digital music players in the US, and possibly close to it in Japan and a couple of other places.

It still isn't a monopoly, because digital downloads is just one way of buying music, and not even the most popular.

I didn't doge your question. All Apple did was to prevent the Pre from being erroneously depicted as an Apple iPod to iTunes. Palm has already stated publicly that they will either look at third party software, or write their own. They know very well that Apple hasn't prevented them from doing what they want to do. They just now have to do it themselves, which is what I told you. Do you read? There are more than a few posts here, by myself and others that have explained this.

On to the rest of the question. You seem to think that Apple is responsible to make sure every other manufacturer can sync to a product that Apple made specifically to work with its own products. Apple doesn't have to do any such thing. There has never been a lawsuit about this from any other company because they all know that.

Palm was being cute in trying what they knew Apple wouldn't allow them to do, just so that people like you would make the statements you have made, thus hoping to stir up a hornets next of criticism.

Apple has no monopoly in iTunes. It doesn't matter that Apple sells most of the downloaded music in the US because that's jut about 20% of the music sold in this country, and that's what counts when calling a monopoly. You can say whatever you like, but again, there's been no call to get Apple's music download service labeled a monopoly, because other companies know that it isn't.

And itunes isn't even the only way to get your music on a digital player. The music doesn't reside in one big file the way Outlook holds its e-mails (unless they've changed that dumb idea). Each song resides in your computer individually. It can be gotten to. And now that it's not DRM'd anymore, there's no excuse.


It's very relevant as it;s one of the reasons you've been ranting yourself. You just don't understand the issues. You're so locked up on one trivial point you can't see beyond it. You are the one who brought up Apple and DRM in the first place, but I guess you forgot that.

As I've already stated, a device doesn't have to pretend it's an Apple product to get at the music on the machine. There are other ways.



You are so wrong again about the latter part of this. What lawsuits are you talking about? No company that makes devices has sued Apple over this.

The only question was that Apple used their own DRM rather that MS's DRM. It was also found to be the fault of the music companies and their licensing restrictions in Europe that were at fault. It was even decided that Apple had been coerced into using DRM and having separate stores. Once Apple convinced the content owners to drop the DRM, everything was fine.

And you keep using the word monopoly as though you know what it means. as far as music sales go, the word doesn't apply.

No. This doesn't "effectively" make iTunes part of the OS. You can remove iTunes, and use any other Mac compatible music playing/organizing software you want to. And there are others.

Other forms of media purchase don't influence the way digital downloading works. Seeing as how digital services are killing brick and mortar stores, the contorlling interst in digit downloads is the controlling interest the future in media sales. Right now iTunes controls how everyone can distribute digital media.

I wouldn't equate selling CD's and selling downloads as the same business. Both are different business models, used by different companies, and have different solutions. It's true iTunes is not the most popular way to buy music. But that's only because the old business model is dying slowly.

I don't think you can have a monopoly on a distribution method for product widely available elsewhere and by other methods. By that logic, HMV has a monopoly on music distributed on CDs because there aren't many other stores still selling CDs. Which doesn't make much sense.

If the ONLY way to buy music was to download it digitally from an online service, then the iTunes Store might be considered a monopoly. But that's not the case right now.

So tell me, when you were using "SoundJam" way back when, did it also do photos and videos back then. How about syncing to a portable music player? Was there a PC version? Did it have a music store? Internet radio? Music video? Movie? Quicktime? Gracenotes? Streaming over wireless network?

If my memory is correct, iTunes has never been able to run in OS9. It always been an OSX app.

So by using "teckstud Logic", a company called "Seattle Computer Products" created MS Windows 95. Because that's the company that Bill Gates bought "86DOS" from. Which became MS DOS and is the root of Windows 95.

Right now, in the US only about 30% of all music is bought using downloads and streaming. That's a minority. There is no way that Apple has a monopoly. Downloading is just one more way to buy music.

Maybe you wouldn't, but it is.

No. Big chain store brick and mortar like WalMart, Best Buy and Target are killing off the little brick and mortar record stores. (Not to forget about Amazon.) That's because these store heavily discount music to attract shoppers to their stores. In the hope that they will make up the discount on other high margin items they sell to the music customer.


But is downloaded online music really eating into CD sales. It's questionable because of how they calculate sales. That's because the sales of downloaded online music is mostly singles. For sales purpose comparison, they count 10 downloaded online music singles as 1 album. But people that wants the whole album will most likely still buy the CD. Brick and mortars do not sell singles (or very little). They mainly sell whole album CD's. So the question is.... How many people, that bought only 1 or 2 songs off an album, would have bought the whole album if those singles weren't made available? If the answer is most of them.....then downloaded online music is taking away from CD sales. But if the answer is only a few (and only if used or discounted).....then downloaded online music is adding to the overall music sales. I'm willing to bet that downloaded online music adds more than take away from total music sales. So brick and mortar stores selling CD's isn't disappearing any time soon. There are numerous other reasons why new CD sales are down. Pirating. Economy. Lousy music. Used CD's stores. eBay. Overpriced. Internet radio.

Oh, THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

But yeah, it did suck big time.

I guess we can agree to disagree. Its impossible to open an online music store today without following the basic rules that have been established by iTunes. At this point its pretty futile to attempt to compete against iTunes at all.


I would say brick and mortar stores are the loosing business model against the gains of the downloading business model. iTunes is the leader of the downloading services.

Its a slow but continuous progression. It may take some years but its clear, downloading will over take physical media. Unless something radically changes, iTunes will be the overwhelmingly dominant media service.

The big box retail stores have aided in the death of stand alone music stores, but they don't at all replace the experience of Tower Records, Virgin Mega Store, or the local independent record store.

Tower, Virgin and stores like them specially catered to music and video enthusiasts.Best Buy, Target, and Wal-mart offer a bland experience, poor selections, or much of the time sold out of what you are looking for.

I think what replaced Tower, Virgin, and the local independent record store was the catered experience combined with convenience.



The difference between the entire album and singles. Especially today they fill most CD's with garbage music as an excuse to charge more. Most of the time, there are only two (three at the most) good songs. Most people only want a couple of songs from the album. iTunes is offering what they want.

The music label demanded that Apple must maintain the DRM. Even if hacked. It was impossible for Apple to changed the firmware of every music player everytime the player was hacked. The music label was satisfied with Apple only having to maintian the DRM on their iPod. This limited the market for the songs they sold to iPods. And iPods was less than 30% of the market back in 2003. (and not only that, if I remember correctly, the iTunes Store was only available on a Mac when it first opened.) This was fine with Apple because at the time, they were only using the iTunes Store as an added service to iPod owners. And at the time, most were Mac users.

Microsoft went the other direction. They came out with PlayForSure DRM for their Windows Media Player and licensed it to who ever wanted to use it. But not even the largest software company in the World, Microsoft, could maintain it across different music players. Microsoft validated Apple discision to only suppy a DRM to their player by abandoning PlayForSure in favor of a DRM that only works for the Zune.

So iTunes was not the only way to get downloaded online music on to a music player. There were dozens of music players that licensed PlayForSure DRM from MS and they all got music into their players without using iTunes software. You don't even need iTunes to put music into an iPod. So long as it's DRM free and it's in a file format that the iPod can play. The only real tie Apple has is their iTunes software to their iTunes Store.




PlayForSure been around for almost as long as FairPlay. There were many online stores selling DRM protected music using PlayforSure. Napster, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Musicmatch and Rhapsody to name a few. It's only been a couple years since most of these began closing their doors. And music players that used PlayForSure back then included SanDisk, Samsumg, Creative Labs, Archos, Iriver, Sony, Toshiba and nearly all cell phones that played MP3.

DRM protected songs from the iTunes Store can be copied and put into other players since day 1. The iTunes software will remove the DRM when burning to a physical CD disc. And this disc can be used to import to other players or be played on any CD player.

Have it ever occurred to you that the reason why the iTunes Store has such a commanding lead is because of the DRM that the music label forced Apple (and others) to put in in the first place. If it weren't for that, there would have been dozens of online music stores selling music that would play on all music players. And most would probablly be in business today. Or even if the music labels wrote and maintained their own DRM and forced all music players to use it in order to play DRM downloaded songs. But there are very few companies that could write and maintain a DRM. Microsoft and Apple are about the only two. And not even Microsoft, with their Windows Media Player, could maintain their PlayForSure DRM for all the other various players. Apple didn't get a commanding lead in the online downloaded music business because of they abused some imaginary monopoly. The record labels and Microsoft handed it to them on a silver platter when they screwed up.

I said this before. Someday, it's possible that downloading will be the major way of getting music. someday, Apple may have the majority of music sales.

But it's not now, and Apple doesn't.

It's not semantics. If you read Billboard, they consider downloading and streaming to be part of the music sales business. That's what it is. Apple has no monopoly in selling music now.

Amazon and other internet retailers are the big gainers in the music business now. THEY are responsible for the B&M businesses having problems.

Yesterday I also read an article that said that people, on average, who download music legally, also buy more Cd's, though now I don't remember where I read it, and don't seem to have saved the link.

Albums don't have any more junk on them than they did before. Well, ok, maybe a bit more because Cd's hold so much more they're like a double album. But that's the fault of the consumer more than anything else. More than a few performers have told me that consumers won't stand for a Cd with just 30 minutes of music, so they're forced to add more songs. My cousins have told me the same thing. I remember when Cd's first came out, and that problem was noted.

People don't feel as though they're getting their money's worth unless the Cd is filled up.

I still remember shopping at Tower Records from the days of vinyl. I stopped buying new CD's from brick and mortar the day my local Tower Records closed. Never been to the music section at Best Buys or Target. Never been to a WalMart. I now mainly buy my CD's from Amazon. Both new and used. More old and used than new.





And right now, that's most likely the main reason why CD's sales are slumping and digital downloads sales are rising. I'm willing to bet that even if there weren't any online stores selling downloaded music, CD's sale would still be dropping because of the cost and all the filler crap that are in most albums today.

I would love to be able to order online a physical CD mix of 10 or 12 songs that I want and then pick it up (the next day or so) and pay for it at a nearby "record" store. ($10 to $12, CD quailty, song titles printed on the disc, case and label.) Even paying online and having it mailed to me would be fine. I still prefer a physical disc back up vs hard drive and at the least CD quailty.

I think the thing that pissed of the consumers the most is that the CD's never ever cost less than the vinyl album they replaced. Even though the CD's cost less to produce. I remember when they were still selling the vinyl version along side the CD version. The CD was always a few bucks more. The only time the vinyl version was more expensive was when it was finally dying out and by that time, the cost of the vinyl became collectable and went up a few bucks. While the price of the CD's stayed the same. (Of course I'm talking new release.)

So the music industry better give us more. Otherwise the least they could have done was to charge the same for the CD as for the vinyl at the time they came out. Afterall, it was cheaper for them to make the CD.

Apple doesn't have to sell the most music to have a controlling interest in the success of the business model.

What you dismiss are the options of the competiton. No one is going to invest money into creating a music store chain, that's a dead end business. To open an online music store essentially is directly competing against iTunes and working with the iPod. You have to give people a good reason why they should use your music service with the iPod over iTunes. This gives Apple a monoplozing position over the market.


Billboard charts are indescriminently reporting how much an album or single sold, that has little to do with how it was sold. When Ford reports how many Cars it sold it doesn't break out how many were sold through dealorship, or car rental companies, or to Zip car. Which are all different business models that don't directly compete with each other. But they all sell the car as a product.


That was from Ars, they were talking about the UK. I doubt the results would be the same in the US.

Through the 80's into the early 90's pop music CD's typically only had around 8 to 10 songs. For the most part all of the songs were good.

In the mid 90's the record industry began CD's with 20 tracks and double albums. Then release the one or two best songs as music videos, while the other 18 songs were absolute garbage that they called filler. Filler was used to justify selling CD's for $18. Typically for that $18 you are only getting two songs that you actually like.

People knew they were being ripped off and is why file sharing took off so big and so quickly.

Well, new technologies always cost more in the beginning.

But I always remember a large part of popular music was cheaper, with good sales.

If we look at prices over time though, we can see the Cd prices have steadily come down in absolute dollars, and much more when taking inflation into account.

When I was a kid, in 1961, when at 11, I first started buying music, I paid $3.99 for an album of popular music, and $4.99 for one with classical. These days that's the equivalent of $28.41 and $35.53 at the end of 2008.

If we look at Lp prices in 1961 again, and compare them to what they would have been in 1982 if they hadn't been held down artificially, we can see that their pricing w0uld have been just a bit lower than the most expensive Cd's out at the time: $16.13 vs. $18. But because of consumer issues, LPs were just costing between $5.99 and $7.99 at the time.

However, if we then look at the price of double albums, the ones with the equivalent amount of music to CD's, then the price equalized. Double albums often cost between $9.99 and $14.99. That's without any inflation being taken into account, or pricing issues being equalized away as I did with the single album release pricing. If I had equalized it, then LP prices for double albums would have been much higher than the equivalent CD.

I had always thought back then that the CD pricing issue was a false one. CD prices dropped a decent amount over the first five years, and are so much lower today, even with inflation, that they are much cheaper than what I paid for single lP releases in the 1960's through the 1970's.

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

Music is so much cheaper these days than it ever was in the past, it's ridiculous! but people still complain. We didn't complain much back then about Lp prices.

That's just one part of the business. The majority of the business sales uses a different model.


New technology such as the internet, changes the way some business is conducted. That doesn't mean that we can say that music stores per se have to be successful any longer in B&M locations. There are many more location in which people purchase music, such as Target, Walmart, BB, etc. Relying on music, and even video for the entire sales structure isn't a good economic theory anymore. Companies that have that as part of their sales are able to do much better at it.

Companies such as Amazon and others who do a very large amount of these sales over the internet have siphoned most of the sales from Tower and others. Downloads are just a part of that, and maybe no even the largest part right now.

This is the same thing as happened to book sales. First the big Companies such as B&N and Borders killed off many smaller booksellers, and then Amazon dug the knife in deeper.

You keep talking about Apple's iTunes as though it exists outside of all of this when it doesn't. It's just another distribution method. You're trying to turn it into another industry which it isn't. Like I keep saying, perhaps five years from now, downloading and streaming may become the major method of legally obtaining music. If that happens, then it will be different, and we will be able to agree on this.


But that's not true either. The amount of downloads a song is sold through is reported. As a matter of fact, for over a year, maybe two, every Monday, the NY Times has a box at the back of its business section that shows the order in which songs are sold as downloads. The numbers are available, and are often reported widely.


Yeah, I saw the article again this morning. I forgot to look at the box on top and was just looking at the articles below.

But I don't agree there either. I do believe that people here aren't that different from people there. I know I'm not the only one who has downloaded an occasional song from itunes only to buy the album as a CD later, and even to buy several more from that artist if it was someone I was not familiar with before. In fact, ever since Apple removed the DRM and went to 256K, I've been buying some music from them. I never did that before. But I've always bought the Album on CD if I really liked the single. I've probably bought singles in the form of CDs at a ratio of ten to one over what I've purchased on iTunes. I know of others who do the same thing.

I've looked through my CD's, and can't agree with that. Very few from back then have fewer than ten songs, and the timing on them is about 50 minutes. Later ones average even more, and the time is often beyond 60 minutes.

But very often, my Lp's were less than 50 minutes.


Acch! LP's had plenty of filler too. It's just that LP's with 8 songs had 5 or 6 filler songs, and 12 song CDs had 8 to 10. Same old.

We always got some great albums and crap albums. Nothing has changed.

Yes but the retail business is going down, online sales are the only growth.




Downloads are not currently the largest but it is clearly where the market is going.



I haven't said iTunes is its own industry. What I am saying is that iTunes has the best position in profitability and future growth. Right now for anyone who wants success in music distribution, iTunes is the 800 gorilla. You have to directly take on iTunes to gain profit and growth.


Those numbers may be broken out in other charts. But the primary Billboard charts include everything. This was your example of why downloads and retail stores are the same business, not mine.



Anecdotally speaking. Most of my friends and peers are from their late 30's to late 20's. Those of us in our late 30's were heavy CD purchasers in the 90's. In fact in the 90's having a large CD collection was a status symbol. You wanted to have a large rack of CD's. Now no one cares about that. Today we trade music files much more than purchase CD's. The next group under us, their phones and iPods are their primary music listening device, they rarely even use CD's.

That may be true, but until it's down well below downloads and streaming, it will preclude Apple from having a monopoly.


Same reply as above.


What you've said several times it that Apple has a monopoly in selling downloads. That would make it it's own industry if music sales were counted that way, which they aren't.

I don't argue the size of Apple's business. No one does. I don't argue that in the US, Apple is the 800 pound gorilla. But it doesn't matter as far as the discussion about monopoly goes.


I read articles in Billboard all the time. There are many about the download business which give sales numbers. There are lists which appear showing those numbers. There are many other places where those numbers appear.


Most of my peers are from the 20's through the 70's. Most of us discourage the illegal trading of music files. You and your friends are part of the problem when you do that.