Apple criticized over iTunes LP development costs - Page 2

Agreed. I'm a no-name interactive developer and I'd easily charge 10k+.

It's a lot of skilled, creative work. If an artist can't pay for that, then obviously that's that. They can sell music instead

What's amazing here is that Apple is charging so LITTLE. They're the big pros, yet charging what I would working out of a garage!*

* I don't even have a garage So... living room.

Which is what I would normally do. But in this case I wanted to expound on a previous thought while still preserving it online to invoke discussion. I didn't have the thought in the followup post until after I considered what I had written previously.

|I don't know where you're getting the figure of $3,000 for a Blu-Ray burner. They can be bought for as little as $200 now. I also don't really understand why you're comparing blu-ray to iTunes LP considering one is a high definition delivery format for video content and the other is an interactive music album. iTunes extras doesn't even compare to Blu-Ray as it's only standard definition so I don't know why people keep making these completely un-necessary arguments to try and justify apple's new formats. They can both co-exist you know. This isn't highlander, there can be more than one.

Anyway, Gizmodo are talking out their collective rear ends as usual. $10,000 for developing an iTunes LP would be the lower end of the spectrum in terms of price for developing that kind of content. As a designer who has regurlarly worked on DVD authoring and interactive media, I can say that for a fact. From what I've seen of iTunes LP I would charge in and around that just for doing the visuals, yet alone the authoring. If that's all Apple are charging that's a steal for what the result is.

AACS is mandatory, even if you don't care about it? At least with DVDs you didn't have to encrypt your stuff.

That just blows.

Thank you, ChocolateLab, for your comments. On these forums we sometimes debate ideas of which we haven't a clue, we just speculate and try to sound smart. It's good to hear from people like you who are facing the issues in the real world.

it was originally the major record companies that came up with digital LP idea and Apple is just developing their own version of it. there will be another version coming out soon from the "other" category.

Apple might not offer it to indie labels because they may be under contract with the major record companies with this

I have to disagree with this article which is rare since I enjoy Prince's posts. iTunes LP is not some special feature that most people may even want. $10,000 is simply too much to pay and much of the best music that has come out over the last 15 years were indie artists. When only certain artists get this "honor" it is more about the artist and less about the music. Who is to say where this line is drawn. By this premise albums like "Exile from Guyville" or "For Emma, Forever Ago" could not have an iTunes LP upon it's initial release.


I keep thinking to the "Think Different" ads. The most influential people were not those in the mainstream but the people who think outside the box.

this would seem to be to be the key statement. this (and the Extras feature) are a test. see if there is interest, work out the kinks etc. if you watch the keynote, Jobs even indicates that the labels and artists will be making these things themselves. which actually makes me wonder if the price mentioned was actually a sign up to get all the tools and not an album by album cost. Once the project is deemed viable.

and yeah I know, someone is going to say that an Apple Rep says. well guess what, it wouldn't be the first time an Apple Rep got something wrong. An Apple Rep assured me that I would have no problems with my Epson printer when I updated to Snow Leopard but oops, I sure did have problems. cause Epson had not written an SL driver yet. And I've had other Apple Reps make similar mistakes. Point being that just cause someone is an Apple Rep doesn't mean they can't misunderstand or poorly state infomation.


note the part I put in bold. this whole experiment is only about 6 weeks old if that. now in 6 months if they are saying 'you aren't old enough to play in this sandbox' then you've got something to gripe about.

I realize you may hate teckstud and all, but it seems to me he has a point. They could have included a PDF of CD booklet with the digital album purchase from the get go, but they almost never have done that.

I'm not seeing a way to preview this LP system either, it would seem to be in their best interest to give the buyer a better idea of what they're getting for the extra $4-$5.


I agree. But as for the burner, maybe they meant a BD duplicator? I'm pretty sure BD duplicators are cheaper than that now, I thought I saw one for half that price, and it included a printer setup for printing a design onto the disc. I don't understand the article's bit about BD-RW (ReWritable). If you're distributing media for sale, you're writing to BD-RE (REcordable, i.e. write once).


If they're serious about making a decent splash, it would seem they would have started out with more than ten albums.

The line is blurring between Apple and Microsoft's tactics more and more these days.

Can I find a new underdog computer company?

It's my impression this is a proprietary format that can only be sold on the iTunes store. It seems to me Apple should have developed an open standard that would give a product that could be sold from any web site and loaded into iTunes just like any track. Then any company would be able to provide software for creation/playback of LPs and to repeat myself, be sold for instance, by Amazon.com, or as a download from anyone's web site. Given the dominance of iTunes this would entirely avoid any antitrust/monopoly implications.

Robert

Maybe there will be an update/ overhaul to iWeb (to make it actually usable) that produces LP content.

But they actually do some work for you. If you have some knowledge, you can create decent LP by yourself for $0.
Apple will charge $10000 just to let you in, doing exactly nothing for you. They just abuse their monopoly. Disgusting.

They wouldn't charge $10000 if they want to allow it for indies to develop it in next version of iWeb. Perhaps they change it after - surprise - they find out no one is interested in producing LP content.

Aren't graphic designers/ web developers a dime a dozen? I'm having a pretty hard time believing that $10,000 is a perfectly reasonable fee for what is basically a glorified Flash movie that one or two guys could throw together in a week and make it look really good.

First, I used to develop websites and am an iPhone developer. I even developed standalone desktop-resident and DVD-resident websites before apple invented widgets.

I looked at a couple of LP files and they are mainly HTML, CSS, and JavaScript-- common tools in the toolbag of web or widget developers. There is a proprietary framework that "plays" the content through iTunes.

I, briefly, considered reverse engineering the package to allow me to create an LP that played through Quicktime (bypassing iTunes).

However, what I am really interested in is the tools and the IDE that are used in creating an LP package (rather than the contents of the package, itself).

I am particularly interested in creating "LPs" of music videos and video podcasts.

In the LP announcement*, Steve Jobs said that:


The emphasis is Steve's.

So, it seems that these "tools" do exist in some form. They could be a single integrated LP IDE. More likely they are a group of existing tools cobbled together (GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, Preview, DashCode, iWeb).

Apple, certainly has software bits that can do all the things necessary to create an LP... but I suspect that there is no single, integrated tool-- yet!

But, I believe there will be a tool when Apple gets it together.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that iTunes LP is manna from heaven made specifically for Indie houses.


Dick



* The iTunes LP announcement:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/M...4&id=275834665



You can watch the whole thing, or just scrub in to:

07:40 where the discussion of iTunes begins
13:23 where Steve Jobs introduces iTunes LP
14:46 where Steve discusses the LP tools
19:21 where the iTunes store is demoed
21:45 where iTunes LP is demoed

*

Maybe Apple learned something from the app store, and they didn't want to be overwhelmed by the demand.

Or, maybe the "LP package" is still a work-in-process and Apple wants to work with a limited number of creatives to refine it.

Or, maybe the "tools" for creating LPs aren't up to Apple's standards for general release to the public, developers, artists.

In any case, Apple can control the situation by adding an arbitrarily-expensive "cover charge".

I believe Apple does not want to get into the LP content creation business. This "cover charge" is merely a way to bring some order to the process of: refining the package; defining the procedures; preparing the software; preparing the iTunes store; and preparing the creatives and developers.

Then, when it's "all together", Apple announces the "LP Creation Package" and removes the cover charge (admitting the general public).

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Where can one find that green garbage bag when you need it most?

Well, do you have all the pictures and video already shot, edited and in the can?

Or, do you need expensive/powerful software (and the training to use it), computers, cameras, lenses, videoCams, Lighting, studio time, etc., to prepare the LP content.

Any special effects, e.g. green screen, compositing, rotoscoping?

How long does it take to make .pngs of all the lyrics and textual content?


Even if all the video and pictures exist, it can take hours of editing to create a few minutes of content.

I have about $10,000 worth of software (Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, Canvas, special plugins and filters, etc).

I have $1,500 worth of VideoCam equipment that I use to take video of the grandkids (3) soccer games-- about 1 hour per game.

I have 7 Macs and 20 Terabytes of external hard disk (video files are quite big-- 1 hour of video is about 57 Gig).

When I get home I import and examine the footage looking for highlights (importing takes about 50 minutes per hour of video). This is a tedious process just locating the clips you want to use. Once you have the clips, you need to manipulate them into a acceptable presentation-- arranging, cutouts, compositing, adjusting color, size, cropping, freeze frame, slow motion, synch background music and sound effects.

It can easily take hours (or even days) to get everything just right for a 2-minute highlight,

So, no, I don't think $10,000 is unreasonable... if anything, it is much too low.

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No and you?

Well the truth meter must be working, hence your venom.

So, according to your logic, for each LP Apple buys 10.000 worth of equipment, and then throws it away, so that the next client is forced to pay another 10.000? Ha. I kid.

But seriously, if LPs are web-like, development costs should be very low. If I had a band, all I wanted to put in it would be cover art, lyrics, band bio and some extra photos.

So if it takes them months to approve an app how long do you think it will take them to build an LP? You have got to be kidding. apple would need thousands of builders. That's ridiculous. Especially when my team can build a presentation like this in about a week including generating the content. I doubt building every LP is Apple's plan.

Agreed. This is what I am thinking. It probably will change. The only thing that may prevent that from happening are the concessions to the major labels. Certainly when we are talking about delivering magazines or comics this policy can't hold true either. Unless they are looking at preventing indies in other mediums from selling on the ITMS as well but that just sounds like it would give people an opportunity to slam Apple some more.

So… why don’t Indy artists just grab the HTML, CSS, JS templates and create their own iTunes LP-like content that will open up in a web browser free of charge? Why not just create a new file type (example: artist_name.olp for Open LP) that will do everything that iTunes LP will do but without requiring iTunes to work. It seems odd that Indy artists are upset that they can’t be more tied to iTunes.

Thanks for the reply. I can see the value in what you detailed, particularly with producing the video. Editing, less so, as video editors also seem to be in pretty high abundance, even many talented ones.

Nonetheless, I don't think Apple's package is including very much of what you described. Maybe converting text to pngs. You asked how long that takes. 15 minutes? I certainly don't think Apple will be sending a crew over to the band to film them. I seriously doubt there's much if any editing involved either. It seems a case of you send us the graphics, video, text and we assemble it.

I think Daniel was really stretching his reality distortion field for this article. Physical media like Blu Ray is not a valid comparison to, what I said before, is basically a glorified Flash movie. And saying the fee is necessary for quality control? Didn't he recently criticize MS for instituting a per app submission fee? If anything, the App store, not iTunes, needs a submission fee.

And then there are client changes, legal concerns, copyrights, patents, logos, and more client changes, etc. And there are more persons involved and who won't do it for nothing.

So what is holding you back? Or anybody else that is complaining?

I didn't make my point clearly enough.

Let me try this:

If Apple does, in fact, charge $10,000 per LP album to create the package.

If the necessary content (pictures, videos, lyrics, credits, background material for each song, etc.) already exists.

It takes creative skilled people, with talent, with training, with professional hardware and software, to put together a LP package.

I have an example where all the content is available and all the skill, hardware, software and training is already in place.

In my case, I am using about 14 seconds of game play to create 2 minutes of video (with audio background) to present a soccer highlight. This is roughly equivalent to 1 song in a 12-song LP album.

First, I get the content into a format I could manipulate (uploading from the camera).

Then I spent several hours reviewing the footage to see what I had-- jumping back and forth marking points of interest.

To do this I have to be knowledgeable about the game of soccer, the particular players, the position of people on and off screen. A good coach once told me that: "Goals don't win soccer games, Defense wins soccer games... provide a good defense and the goals will happen".

So, after identifying the clips and bits I can use, I put together a prototype of what looks good.

At this point I am several hours into the process.

Now, i see how it plays-- parts are too light/dark/blurry. They need to be corrected.

Then, I decide to insert a freeze frame here and another further down, with a slow-motion lead-in.

The freeze frame needs to be cropped or otherwise highlighted for emphasis.

This is an iterative process, going over things, adding, modifying, deleting.

For example my original 14-second sequence shows a sweeper getting the ball near center line, kicking it over everyone's heads and it bounces in front of the goal, where a teammate heads it into the net. I have a freeze frame of the kick, a slowmo of the ball bouncing and another freeze of the header. I need cropped and enlarged portraits to highlight the 2 players-- the kicker is easy, but all I have is the back of the header player. So, back to the original video to see if I can find a workable portrait of the second player, that won't look out of context.

I usually add a prolog, titles, some text panels explaining what is happening, and an epilog. This takes time selecting fonts that will look good at various resolutions, colors, fades, wipes, and entering the actual content.

On this particular project, it took about 8 hours to get to this point. Isolating individual action shots on a field of running players is tough!

Then, I wanted some upbeat background music-- I picked a segment of a song by trial and error, and found a match I liked after about 30 minutes.

Once this was done, the process of synching the video with the audio began. What I attempt to do here is match up points in the audio with key points in the video: a drumroll as a player approaches the ball then a rimshot or symbol clash at the point of impact. This is done by fiddling with the video, clipping/extending to match the audio.

This too, is iterative, and each time you need to review more and more of what you have done as the project nears completion.

On this particular project, I used Arlo Guthrie's St. Louis Tickle for the opening and main video, then Liberty Bell March (Monty Python Theme) for the trailer credits and short video of a Beckham midfield goal from 1996.

When I was happy, about 11 hours in, I uploaded the video to YouTube in HD format. After about 40 minutes, the video was available but the audio was disabled-- YouTube didn't accept the "Tickle" audio.

So, back to the drawing boards. I spent an hour trying various "acceptable" audio tracks, but couldn't find one I liked. So I redid the whole thing with the Monty Python track and just ignored the A/V synching.

After 12 hours of work, I had my 2:18 duration video "published".


I didn't use expensive software for this, Just iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto and Garageband.


The point is, it took someone:

1) who knew what he was doing
2) was familiar with the content and context

many hours to package a single video.

I wasn't concerned with the logistics and juxtaposition of multiple songs in an album. I wasn't concerned with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to present a LP widget. I wasn't concerned with lyrics or background material.


Just doing the video is not an easy job.


In an earlier post I stated that I don't think Apple wants to get into the LP creation business. Rather, they are using the $10,000 as an entry fee or cover charge so they can control the process while they gain experience.

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+++ qft

That may be true, but unless the video editors are familiar with the artist and their work, it may take a lot of involvement by the artist working with the editor (as the dollar-sign odometer spins).

I think it is Apple's goal to have a tool where the artists can create (or at least storyboard) their LPs.


15 minutes of mechanical time... maybe, for each song. But then there's the selection of fonts colors transitions, backgrounds. This is an artistic process that probably takes several iterations to get right (even with a tool to automate the process).


I mostly agree with this! I believe Apple is working with a few flagship creatives to help define the Package, Process and Tools. I think that, ultimately, Apple wants to get complete LP packages from the creatives.


Yeah, DED usually seems to have an underlying agenda, and sometimes manipulates facts to fit that agenda.

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Holding me back from what? My only concern is Apple suppressing indie content.


Who said anything about all that? That's the label and artist's concerns. All Apple is doing is assembling finished content into a proprietary wrapper.

That is definitely the point of the fee. I can imagine that being flooded with thousands of LP's for approval is exactly what Apple doesn't want. They've have a hard of enough time approving the Apps. The fee is definitely a cost above and beyond actually producing the LP content which is my only gripe, but at the same time I think it's smart to encourage serious development.

With client fixes/ approvals/ changes/ re-edits I'm sure Apple and the producer would both rather that a finished product goes to Apple. They definitely do not "approve" or proof TV shows (there are many glitches on the ITMS) nor do they really "approve" or proof the music. The idea of approval really stems from the App store. Apple would be overextending themselves in this case so it seems evident that the current scheme is temporary and we'll be building our own LP's soon enough.

The fee itself is another matter, while it is understandable for a number of reasons, I think it could be smaller since I don't need Apple to build an HTML 5 presentation for me. That's just putting effort into the wrong place and it sounds like a nightmare.

Tough situation for Apple especially since they've already stated that they don't want to have multiple rules for every medium (music, movies/ TV, print, Apps) on the store.

It'll be interesting to see how they shape the process for print media, which is going to be particularly difficult given that the magazine has to be updated daily, weekly or monthly. It could get very expensive, but if the publishers were able to offset their print costs (which are also very expensive) a fee as in the LP scheme might be reasonable. Depends on your formula for ROI and how dedicate/ confident you are to electronic media delivery.

the peer to peer pirates killed it
apple saved it

I think the difference might be that audio and video are linear media. It's not likely to misbehave, and it's likely to be to Apple's technical specs if they use Apple's encoders. iTunes LP and apps are interactive and there is interpreted or executed code in the product. Just a thought.

I think that Apple will handle print like podcasts, where each issue is an entity, unto itself... you don't update or replace existing issues, you just add the next issue. With podcasts, Apple already has the subscription mechanism in place for free content. For paid content, the payment mechanism is handled by the provider, not Apple. Apple provides search and access to the content. The content resides on the provider's servers.

Some of this could change for magazines, newsletters, newspapers, etc., but the pieces are already in place.

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Since you have current experience, consider an LP, like Nora Jones-- where the artist came to you with:

1) audio, video and images of the target quality/resolution
2) all the textual material that needs to be converted to appropriate .png files
3) an overall idea/mockup/storyboard of what the album would contain and how the various components would interact,

What currently-available tools would you use?

How long would it take in elapsed time and man hours?

With just basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript?

With a LP IDE tool: with capabilities like like parts of DashCode, iMovie, iWeb, etc.; and some predefined templates?

What price range would you charge?


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I would only add:

in spite of the labels

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I would suggest rereading the article and even following the links, e.g., http://digitalcontentproducer.com/vi.../bluray_blues/

Perhaps you too should reread this article and in particular, "iTunes LP, as AppleInsider was among the first to report, is essentially a self-contained web application and the relatedlinki.e.,


"A look at how iTunes LP and Extras work

Now look at how iTunes Extras are built: while distributed as a single file, the item is really a bundle (a folder that Mac OS X treats as a file) that amounts to a self-contained web site. It acts as a container for folders of standard PNG and JPEG graphics, AAC audio, and H.264 video content together with HTML and CSS presentation and JavaScript code.

Dig deeper into these files and youll see references to TuneKit, Apples internal name for a JavaScript framework fusing WebKit and iTunes as a way to deliver rich, interactive content. This extras project was originally called Cocktail." http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/0...d-at-apple-tv/

By the way, how much do you expect to pay for 80-100 hours to throw your amateur production together?