iTunes 8.2.1 now available for download - Page 6

Some examples of major hit albums from the 80's. Most of the songs from all of these albums still receive mainstream play today.

Michael Jackson's "Thriller", 9 songs

Madonna "Like A Virgin", 9 songs

Prince "Purple Rain", 8 songs

Janet Jackson "Control", 9 songs



I'm not saying that album filler started in the 90's. What I am saying is that it became more prevalent and wide spread tactic in the 90's, it wasn't as common to do before that.

Great, so you've picked 4 albums out of thousands.


I remember lots of filler going back to the '60's, and plenty of complaints about it.

I picked this group because they were the biggest pop music artists of the mid 80's. If music labels wanted anyone to have 20 tracks on an album it would have been them.

My point is by the mid 90's all of the biggest music artists had 20 tracks on their albums.

It's not usually up to the labels. It's up to the artists. The labels are willing to use whatever percentage of the disk capacity the artists need.

Don't forget that in the days of LPs, you could buy a single 45 and didn't have to buy the entire album for the popular song. When cassette tapes became the dominant medium, that largely disappeared. It was then that the record companies realized they could make a lot more money without singles and by forcing people to buy an entire album of music on cassette, which carried over to CDs.

With digital music, thanks to Apple, we're once again able to buy a single song (most of the time). However, I have a feeling this, too, will change, and it will become increasingly difficult to buy a popular song without having to buy the entire album.

CD capacity was less than what it is now, so, it had more to do with how much time the songs used up, not the number of tracks. I believe the first CDs could only hold about 50 minutes of music max. Now I think they can squeeze about 80 minutes of music on a CD.

Originally, it was almost 63 minutes. But you're right, many companies ignore the Red Book specs as CD players can read the 80 minute disks.

As has been shown numerous times the record labels are not at all a benign force in how records are marketed and sold. In the 80's there wasn't an expectation to pile 20 songs on one album. In the 90'a it became a standard practice.

Yes of course compression improved and allowed more songs on the disc. But in the 90's they weren't putting 20 songs on one disc, those were double albums.

In the 80's if they wanted that many songs they could've sold disc sets.

I wasn't even bringing up 20 sings. I didn't even mention it. All I mentioned the was the 10 to 12 songs that so many CD's contain.

not all plans are the same, hate to tell you. I have the basic ATT plan is after taxes it's about $85 and change. No text messaging. So if this guy has 2 phones on the basic plan that would be about $170 but if he has unlimited texting or something like that. i can easily see the prices jumping up over $220 a month. the fact that someone is paying that much for a cell phones is absolutely ridiculous!!! I mean, I have the iPhone, but it makes me sick paying the bill every month. Not to mention the iPhone is the most expensive smartphone plan on the market. But i'm hooked as they say. They should rename this phone to the iCrack!

No I haven't said Apple has a monopoly on sales, I'm saying Apple has a controlling influence over online music distribution. Which is effectively a monopolistic position.



I feel no sympathy for the record labels or music business in general. Through the 90's I myself spent some number of thousands of dollars on CD's, as did others in my age group. Collectively we gave the music industry huge profits. Instead of nurturing that relationship they were greedy and shortsighted. They continued to charge expensive prices for people who had dubious musical talent.

Today being on an independent label can be more desirable than being on a major label. We generally will pay for music and support concerts of indie music, because indie record labels actually care about music and it doesn't feel as though you are giving money to some huge conglomerate that doesn't care.

That's exactly what I just said. A monopoly in music downloads is what you've been saying all along. You can't substitute the word "distribution" for "sales" and think it changes anything. Besides, Apple doesn't distribute music, it sells it. A distributer sells product to the end seller. Apple IS the end seller. They have no influence over distribution of digital music. The content companies do. Apple is just their largest customer.

Remember while Apple forced them to go DRMless, they forced Apple to change its pricing scheme.

Now, people can go anywhere with iTunes music. It's completely out of Apple's hands. They have totally lost control.

I would call the DRM and pricing an equal trade. So far even without DRM no one has been able to effectively eat into iTunes marketshare. While loosing DRM Apple gained the iPhone/iTouch and the App Store. Which greatly helps continue iTunes dominanance.

I dont agree with MissionGreys deduction that the OP must be lying. There are other services and different taxes for states that could easily change the rates. The OP may have also just got the phone and have been including the activation fees, even though they are a one time payment.

Is MissionGreys defense it might be possible to have 2 iPhones and a normal phone with unlimited texting. The normal per-phone plan is $69/month. If he is on a family plan we knock $5 off each phone. If he is a student he gets even more of a discount. I dont care to contact AT&T to figure it out to the penny, but it does seem possible without including taxes.

Dominance in one corner is fine. I'm not even sure if that will last.

We're seeing Tv shows, and now movies, for free on the web. The same thing with some music. If this continues to gain audience, the iTunes model may prove to be a short lived one. It's amazing how things move in different directions.

I would sincerely doubt they'd be that stupid as that would be a direct move against a specific competitor and if they do ever end up in anti-trust court it would be very bad. What they have probably done is used something other than the USB identifier to identify the iPod or they've used a more specific way of verifying this identifier. It could be a call to software in the device, the checking of a file on the device or the verification of a digital signature of the software on the device. It really could be any number of things.

What would be interesting is to see if old iPods still work. Ones that haven't had their software updated in ages. I'm going to pull out my 1st gen iPod and see if it still syncs OK. I know as of 6 months ago it did just fine. If it does then their additional verification checks have been a thought since the very beginning or they've been excluded from the additional verification. In which case it'd be in Palm's best interest to investigate this as well.


Also I would like to give kudos to TenoBall for pointing out that Monopolies themselves are not illegal. That is such a common misconception. He's correct in stating that it's the ABUSE of a monopoly that is. I wrote a very long winded response to a terrible article published by PC World on the subject. I received no response naturally.

Edit:

For those that are interested I checked my 1G iPod (Yes the one with a physical wheel) and it still works in the newest iTunes properly. So their new check is most likely a more specific verification of the identifier, the checking of a file that's been there since day one, or potentially a digital signature as I know they have signed their code for quite some time. As long as it's not the latter the Pre will likely be able to be updated to exploit it fairly easily. If it's a digital signature it'll be a bit more risky for Pre to replicate as it could argue that they are forging Apple's digital signature. (These are recognized by the law, look up Bill Clinton Digital Signature for more information).

Consequently just to be clear the workings of the protection / verification is all just my take on how it might be done.

Thanks everyone for your support, you're the best!!


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Apple isn't trying to stop people from syncing music on the Pre. Apple isn't even trying to stop people from syncing iTunes music on the Pre.

Apple doesn't want iTunes to do the heavy lifting.

And why should they put up with it?