Google won the battle today. But Apple is winning the war. Now if the music can turn into TV and Video!
Google didn't win any battle today. I see it as more of a declaration of war.
The funny thing is that all the focus seems to be on what Apple is going to do next to answer GTV. I haven't even heard microsoft mentioned once. The seem to be slipping into obscurity quickly.
Well Apple has repeatedly said it doesn't make any money on iTunes, but this is good news for Apple on the back end in regards to selling more iPods, iPads and iPhones.
That's the only good I see from this, which is pretty substantial.
Because of the iTune integration with those products, it keeps me away from seeking alternatives to those devices, and non-Apple computers too really.
I commented a few weeks ago on a blog about Ubuntu. I'd be willing to try it, but lack of iTunes keeps me from trying Linux. So that keeps me in the Mac realm too. Windows of course is a non-starter for me.
What I think he is trying to say Solipsism, is that iTunes needs to get into distributing music via the cloud like Spotify does. By distribution, I don't just mean selling it, but listening to your music without a significant hard drive foot print like our friends from Europe have done.
I harp on a bit about Spotify here, but it is a breathtaking application and is the only real threat to iTunes on the horizon for Apple that I can see. Of course I am aware that the money is in the hardware-software tie up, which is where Apple excels, but it IS nice to have that name recognition and market force that Apple have in music right now... Whether Apple would be where they are at present if they didn't have that penetration in the music download business is a moot point.
I have high hopes for this Lala technology though. Here's hoping Apple can take what the Spotify lads have done and run with it. A lot of this will come down to how far they can push those pigs in the music labels into giving them the same sweetheart deal they have for Spotify. The labels own 10% of Spotify though, so... who knows...
What I think he is trying to say Solipsism, is that iTunes needs to get into distributing music via the cloud like Spotify does. By distribution, I don't just mean selling it, but listening to your music without a significant hard drive foot print like our friends from Europe have done.
I harp on a bit about Spotify here, but it is a breathtaking application and is the only real threat to iTunes on the horizon for Apple that I can see. Of course I am aware that the money is in the hardware-software tie up, which is where Apple excels, but it IS nice to have that name recognition and market force that Apple have in music right now... Whether Apple would be where they are at present if they didn't have that penetration in the music download business is a moot point.
I have high hopes for this Lala technology though. Here's hoping Apple can take what the Spotify lads have done and run with it. A lot of this will come down to how far they can push those pigs in the music labels into giving them the same sweetheart deal they have for Spotify. The labels own 10% of Spotify though, so... who knows...
It sounds like he may have been hinting on that, but nothing he said made any sense to me, hence my comment.
I expect the Lala purchase to work out to be a server-side iTunes Library database that doesn't store your 'actual' files on the server or stream from your Mac or PC, but use duplicate files that match the ones on your local drive to stream audio to your device.
Microsoft has enough money to keep it going forever no matter how poorly it sells, when the iPhone and the rest of us are history, the Zunes and the cockroaches will crawl out from under their rocks to inherit the earth.
well yes, the cockroaches may not even outlive ballmer (or schmidt...)
so what happened with google on this? why aren't they selling music like apple? they're copying off of everything they do
Since edging out WalMart in 2008 to become the top music retailer, Apple has increased its lead with iTunes and is now outselling both Walmart and second place BestBuy combined, while handling more than half of all digital music sales in the US.
According to a report published by Billboard, Apple's share of music sales increased by more than five percentage points, from 21.4% in 2008 to 26.7% last year. That's more than double the 12.7% share of the US music market iTunes took in 2007, when the iPhone was first announced.
iTunes vs Mobile Ringtones
Apple's expansion in digital sales was observed despite a collective decline in sales among mobile providers. Music sales by Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and AT&T fell from 6.6% in 2008 to 4.9% last year, deflating the optimism that cellular providers would deliver the next big market for music, primarily thorough sales of ringtones.
Apple's introduction of lower priced ringtones and free tools within iTunes that enable users to create their own ringtones may likely have played a part in stalling the growth of the $2-3 per ringtone business being pushed by mobile providers.
Continued decline of physical media music
Outside of digital sales, the market for music sold on physical media is in even worse shape, with CDs and other music formats sold through brick and mortal retail stores plunging from a 57.5% share of the music market in 2008 to a 49.3% share last year.
That allowed digital downloads to eclipse the market share of physical media in the US. Half of all digital media sales occurred through Apple's iTunes Store.
Walmart, the CD sales leader, saw its share fall from 15% to 12.5% over the same year period, while second place BestBuy fell from 10.7% to 8.7% share, despite acquiring the digital media Napster business.
Amazon vs iTunes
Amazon, which sells both CDs and digital downloads, increased its share of both markets, with its physical media sales jumping from 4.2% to 5.8% (at the expense of record stores) and its overall combined share of music sales increasing from 4.9% to 7.1%. Amazon's digital MP3 sales amounted to just a 1.3% share of the market in 2009, up from 0.8% in 2008, but far short of Apple's 26.7% share and its year over year growth in iTunes.
Billboard wrote that Amazon's growth and share was "still well short of where major labels had hoped Amazon's download store would be by now, dimming earlier expectations that it will be able to significantly reduce the labels' heavy dependence on iTunes for digital sales."
The attractiveness of Apple's iTunes Store for music, and the inability of Amazon and other firms (including Sony Ericsson's "PlayNow" online service designed to compete with iTunes, or the Sony BMG/Universal Music "Total Music" service that was shuttered last year) to steal customers away from the iPod maker's music store offerings raises some doubts about Google's newly announced acquisition of Simplify Media, which the company is expected to turn into an online music buying service directed at its Android users. Google's AdMob subsidiary reports that Android users do not buy or even download as much media as Apple's customers.
Apple continues to advance its iTunes music, video, iBooks, and mobile software sales into new markets globally, including recent new expansions of iBooks and app sales in Germany.
There's 1 reason iTunes sells more music than anyone else. Most people own iPods, which means most people use iTunes. When you purchase music from the iTunes store it's placed directly in your music library automatically. With every other service, you're going through that extra step to put the music in your iTunes library, in the proper directory.
For most people (the 70% computer illiterate population), this is too much effort. I have friends who work on Mac's all day editing video, recording music, doing post production of photos. And most of them don't understand where their music is stored, beyond the iTunes GUI they are completely lost.
It just shows what happens when you make a better mouse trap....
.
Back in the Napster days, the music execs would lament that you could not compete with free. Apple proved not only that you could, if you offered a compelling product, but also that you could compete head-on with free and still beat every other purchase source.
if only they sold music in high quality standards, gave you an optional physical cd when you buy a full album and made a cloud service for iTunes...
Quality doesn't matter to most people. Convenience trumps quality every time, at least in modern America. Price figures in very heavily as well. Quality is something that relatively few people value over the other factors.
Honestly I believe Apple will just copy what Google is doing with Google TV. That wouldn't be that hard for them. I'm sure the Google TV will motivate them to update AppleTV.
Apple is not the type to sit around and then suddenly react. Despite the appearance that Apple has done nothing on AppleTV since the last update, I'm sure that they have been working on adding new capabilities all along. When a new AppleTV finally arrives, many of its new features may seem to "copy" Google's offering but, in fact, would have been under development for quite some time.
My thought is that if Google has introduced something innovative and new here (i.e. that Apple hadn't already started on) then it probably won't make the next update. Apple is not prone to slamming in a desirable feature just to play "me-too". (Witness copy/paste and multitasking on iPhone OS.) They will spend the time to get it right.
Bottom line: if we see something added to AppleTV in the near term that looks anything like Google TV, you can be sure that it wasn't just a "copy".
Comments
Google won the battle today. But Apple is winning the war. Now if the music can turn into TV and Video!
Google didn't win any battle today. I see it as more of a declaration of war.
The funny thing is that all the focus seems to be on what Apple is going to do next to answer GTV. I haven't even heard microsoft mentioned once. The seem to be slipping into obscurity quickly.
That's the only good I see from this, which is pretty substantial.
Because of the iTune integration with those products, it keeps me away from seeking alternatives to those devices, and non-Apple computers too really.
I commented a few weeks ago on a blog about Ubuntu. I'd be willing to try it, but lack of iTunes keeps me from trying Linux. So that keeps me in the Mac realm too. Windows of course is a non-starter for me.
What?
What I think he is trying to say Solipsism, is that iTunes needs to get into distributing music via the cloud like Spotify does. By distribution, I don't just mean selling it, but listening to your music without a significant hard drive foot print like our friends from Europe have done.
I harp on a bit about Spotify here, but it is a breathtaking application and is the only real threat to iTunes on the horizon for Apple that I can see. Of course I am aware that the money is in the hardware-software tie up, which is where Apple excels, but it IS nice to have that name recognition and market force that Apple have in music right now... Whether Apple would be where they are at present if they didn't have that penetration in the music download business is a moot point.
I have high hopes for this Lala technology though. Here's hoping Apple can take what the Spotify lads have done and run with it. A lot of this will come down to how far they can push those pigs in the music labels into giving them the same sweetheart deal they have for Spotify. The labels own 10% of Spotify though, so... who knows...
What I think he is trying to say Solipsism, is that iTunes needs to get into distributing music via the cloud like Spotify does. By distribution, I don't just mean selling it, but listening to your music without a significant hard drive foot print like our friends from Europe have done.
I harp on a bit about Spotify here, but it is a breathtaking application and is the only real threat to iTunes on the horizon for Apple that I can see. Of course I am aware that the money is in the hardware-software tie up, which is where Apple excels, but it IS nice to have that name recognition and market force that Apple have in music right now... Whether Apple would be where they are at present if they didn't have that penetration in the music download business is a moot point.
I have high hopes for this Lala technology though. Here's hoping Apple can take what the Spotify lads have done and run with it. A lot of this will come down to how far they can push those pigs in the music labels into giving them the same sweetheart deal they have for Spotify. The labels own 10% of Spotify though, so... who knows...
It sounds like he may have been hinting on that, but nothing he said made any sense to me, hence my comment.
I expect the Lala purchase to work out to be a server-side iTunes Library database that doesn't store your 'actual' files on the server or stream from your Mac or PC, but use duplicate files that match the ones on your local drive to stream audio to your device.
Microsoft has enough money to keep it going forever no matter how poorly it sells, when the iPhone and the rest of us are history, the Zunes and the cockroaches will crawl out from under their rocks to inherit the earth.
well yes, the cockroaches may not even outlive ballmer (or schmidt...)
so what happened with google on this? why aren't they selling music like apple? they're copying off of everything they do
Since edging out WalMart in 2008 to become the top music retailer, Apple has increased its lead with iTunes and is now outselling both Walmart and second place BestBuy combined, while handling more than half of all digital music sales in the US.
According to a report published by Billboard, Apple's share of music sales increased by more than five percentage points, from 21.4% in 2008 to 26.7% last year. That's more than double the 12.7% share of the US music market iTunes took in 2007, when the iPhone was first announced.
iTunes vs Mobile Ringtones
Apple's expansion in digital sales was observed despite a collective decline in sales among mobile providers. Music sales by Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and AT&T fell from 6.6% in 2008 to 4.9% last year, deflating the optimism that cellular providers would deliver the next big market for music, primarily thorough sales of ringtones.
Apple's introduction of lower priced ringtones and free tools within iTunes that enable users to create their own ringtones may likely have played a part in stalling the growth of the $2-3 per ringtone business being pushed by mobile providers.
Continued decline of physical media music
Outside of digital sales, the market for music sold on physical media is in even worse shape, with CDs and other music formats sold through brick and mortal retail stores plunging from a 57.5% share of the music market in 2008 to a 49.3% share last year.
That allowed digital downloads to eclipse the market share of physical media in the US. Half of all digital media sales occurred through Apple's iTunes Store.
Walmart, the CD sales leader, saw its share fall from 15% to 12.5% over the same year period, while second place BestBuy fell from 10.7% to 8.7% share, despite acquiring the digital media Napster business.
Amazon vs iTunes
Amazon, which sells both CDs and digital downloads, increased its share of both markets, with its physical media sales jumping from 4.2% to 5.8% (at the expense of record stores) and its overall combined share of music sales increasing from 4.9% to 7.1%. Amazon's digital MP3 sales amounted to just a 1.3% share of the market in 2009, up from 0.8% in 2008, but far short of Apple's 26.7% share and its year over year growth in iTunes.
Billboard wrote that Amazon's growth and share was "still well short of where major labels had hoped Amazon's download store would be by now, dimming earlier expectations that it will be able to significantly reduce the labels' heavy dependence on iTunes for digital sales."
The attractiveness of Apple's iTunes Store for music, and the inability of Amazon and other firms (including Sony Ericsson's "PlayNow" online service designed to compete with iTunes, or the Sony BMG/Universal Music "Total Music" service that was shuttered last year) to steal customers away from the iPod maker's music store offerings raises some doubts about Google's newly announced acquisition of Simplify Media, which the company is expected to turn into an online music buying service directed at its Android users. Google's AdMob subsidiary reports that Android users do not buy or even download as much media as Apple's customers.
Apple continues to advance its iTunes music, video, iBooks, and mobile software sales into new markets globally, including recent new expansions of iBooks and app sales in Germany.
There's 1 reason iTunes sells more music than anyone else. Most people own iPods, which means most people use iTunes. When you purchase music from the iTunes store it's placed directly in your music library automatically. With every other service, you're going through that extra step to put the music in your iTunes library, in the proper directory.
For most people (the 70% computer illiterate population), this is too much effort. I have friends who work on Mac's all day editing video, recording music, doing post production of photos. And most of them don't understand where their music is stored, beyond the iTunes GUI they are completely lost.
Speaking of not shipping a product yet... where are they at with GoogleTunes?
Should be announced any day now... should be up and running by Winter 2010 along with Flash mobile on Android and the GoogleTablet.
gPhone, gTV, gTunes, gPad.... I think Eric Schmidt is behind the innovation... what a loss for Apple's board...
It just shows what happens when you make a better mouse trap....
.
Back in the Napster days, the music execs would lament that you could not compete with free. Apple proved not only that you could, if you offered a compelling product, but also that you could compete head-on with free and still beat every other purchase source.
It is a remarkable achievement.
if only they sold music in high quality standards, gave you an optional physical cd when you buy a full album and made a cloud service for iTunes...
Quality doesn't matter to most people. Convenience trumps quality every time, at least in modern America. Price figures in very heavily as well. Quality is something that relatively few people value over the other factors.
Honestly I believe Apple will just copy what Google is doing with Google TV. That wouldn't be that hard for them. I'm sure the Google TV will motivate them to update AppleTV.
Apple is not the type to sit around and then suddenly react. Despite the appearance that Apple has done nothing on AppleTV since the last update, I'm sure that they have been working on adding new capabilities all along. When a new AppleTV finally arrives, many of its new features may seem to "copy" Google's offering but, in fact, would have been under development for quite some time.
My thought is that if Google has introduced something innovative and new here (i.e. that Apple hadn't already started on) then it probably won't make the next update. Apple is not prone to slamming in a desirable feature just to play "me-too". (Witness copy/paste and multitasking on iPhone OS.) They will spend the time to get it right.
Bottom line: if we see something added to AppleTV in the near term that looks anything like Google TV, you can be sure that it wasn't just a "copy".
Thompson