If any of you owned warner music you would be singing a completely different tune.
imagine you sell product X until everyone learns how to get it for free, then a company comes along and says it can convince people who are getting your product for free to pay for it. you play along until you realize that you're stuck working with a monopoly [how far is iTunes from a monopoly?] you want competition, and someone [amazon, napster, etc] comes along and says they'll play the way you want them to. WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
The major complaint with the labels is that they don't have a vision anymore. Their vision for the last ten years has been to convert people to a pay - per - play model at a time where music was becoming more readily available over the internet for free.
I do own NBC stock... ok it is a very small part of GE... and it troubles me that they are stuck in the same problem that the record industry was-- they are stuck on a business model of providing entertainment exactly good enough for consumers to watch through the commercials, in an environment that they control.
What the record companies (and TV distributors... and eventually movies) need to determine is how they will chose to add value in the future if they can't compete in the pure distribution and advertising sales market. Many of those companies do actually have strengths in promoting and helping to deliver a product for the consumer. Or, they can compete with Apple and offer the content directly-- it's a question of short term and long-term objectives and profits.
to simplify, evil (i.e., big music companys) was on the ropes, good (i.e., AAPL) came along and as good often does because it's (i.e., AAPL) good, decided to help evil. But, now that evil is seemingly back on its feet, evil wants to break off and kill the good that helped him. This is all political and nasty. I don't think any existing company can unseat AAPL right now, it would take a new, supercompany, run by superheroes of coolness and smarts, maybe 10-20 years from now...
However, I do most of my purchasing late at night when bored, can't get to sleep. Not in the clear light of day. I rarely buy a CD unless I want it in a very high bit rate form. I'm betting I can get as good a music from the indies.
maybe they can buy apple records and sign musicians for iTunes only distribution... then they can take ALL of the Record Label's coin.
I believe they pretty much bought out Apple Records when they settled the lawsuit with that company recently. I'm hoping Apple does become a music label.
This is a far bigger problem for Apple than most people can seem to see.
...
My wife and I watch the Sci-Fi channel. Our DVR just died, and all of the content died along with it. Normally, we will buy shows from iTunes if somehow we miss it. If that's no longer going to be possible, we will find other ways, and places, we can buy those shows. We won't be the only ones. Apple will lose big from this.
It's not the first time that Job's rigidity has cost him. I fear it won't be the last.
But what may also be food-for-thought is that, as Apple only gets around 5% per item and the media company gets around 10x this, the media Company will be 'losing' more rapidly!
There are two formats that I buy: iTunes and Blu-Ray. As far as I'm concerned any company that's dumb enough to not release on those formats doesn't deserve my money and I'll get their content the old pre-iTunes/Blu-Ray way: free downloads. If it's not compatible with my iPod or PS3 I absolutely refuse to pay for it. I've already been forced to do this with Heroes' second season and with Transformers.
I'd really like to see musicians and filmmakers start dumping their labels and studios and start self-distributing over the internet. The big labels/studios just get in the way and piss everyone off anyway.
So what is Warner leaves for a while? They are going to need to convince their top dollar performers that their income won't drop. They will have to PAY for the promotion impact that the FREE top spot on iTunes weekly mailer got them. ANd they are going to need to generate the sales from somewhere that they would have received from iTunes. That's a big job, will be costly and will fail.
While iTunes customers will miss some of the music they already have their iPod and have already invested money into downloaded music for it. Who really believes that they will drop the iPod simply to get an album or two from Warner. A few friends get together and buy the CD, rip it to all of their computers (plus burn a CD for everyone) and load the CD into their iPod.
Warner has nothing to gain if you're pragmatic and a lot to loose - especially their most important performers who will be looking to move to an iTunes friendly label when their contract expires.
So when exactly do you think we'll see the iTunes Music Label? They have the server farms already, they have the software to make the music already. They have the software to distribute the music already, and they already have the hardware most people use to listen to music.
The missing piece is the iTunes Music Label.
Personally, I'd love to see music stay at .99 a song and see musicians get more of a cut per song because there's no longer a middle man between artist and distributor (record companies).
It will be interesting to see whether Radiohead platforms the new album to iTunes for some exclusive period before making it available on CD; the choose-your-own-price deal has been a good stunt, but it's not going to last forever.
I would love to see more artists control their own catalogs and then make deals with iTunes, Amazon, distributors, etc., on their own terms.
I agree 100 percent. I should have mentioned that I was not alluding to the "choose-your-own price" stunt which Radiohead did rather than just the fact that they went on their own on the internet to sell music.
I too hope Apple starts dealing directly with big name artists.
thank you, but wasn't your point that losing content from the iTunes store
would cause Apple to lose computer sales?
It's not really losing sales in a tangible way, you can't lose sales that you haven't made yet.
It's really losing an avenue for marketing. The point is that the content might help draw in people in that might eventually buy their computers. It's kind of a tenuous chain though, I don't think anyone's nailed down exactly how strong the halo effect is or how much of it is a factor in buying a computer. Anyways, once this person drawn in by the iPod/iTunes/store becomes a computer customer, they probably aren't going to jump ship soon.
Whoever is writing these articles really needs to come up with another way to talk about Apple as a company. Every single article has ?Cupertino-based company? in it. I don?t know, but you could just say ?Apple? and be done with it.
Meanwhile, Universal Music Group -- the world's largest collection of record labels -- told Apple earlier this year that it would not renew its yearly exclusive contract and instead would go month-to-month so it could be free to deal with other distributors.
The more distributors, the better. And month-to-month still works.
These content providers are going to let their greed ruin a good thing. Have they forgotten the good old days when everyone just stole their music and there was no alternative to over priced CDs?
Your argument isn't very impressive. Show us where they are charging more? They aren't. In fact, they forced Apple to LOWER prices. That was a first. And don't think that Apple didn't do that because they were concerned about this new DRM-free service from Amazon, because you would be wrong about that.
People like you are a very small minority. The general public simply isn't interested in these battles. All they want is to get their content. If it isn't on iTunes any longer, they will get from where i'ts gone. Don't think otherwise.
Beating iTunes is not going to be easy. The music labels are free to reinvent the wheel if they want. Don't believe for a second that they are doing so because they want to give the customer more choice. As for DRM, I believe Apple was the first one to drop DRM. Had they not dropped it first, Amazon would not be selling DRM free music now. DRM was something that the music industry insisted on, not Apple. The reason that Amazon is able to sell music without DRM is that Universal and other labels want to compete against Apple and the iTunes store. They know that they are weak as long as iTunes is the market leader. They want to kill iTunes so they can charge more, not less. The music labels want to charge us more for the new stuff, something that Apple refused to do. NBC left iTunes because they wanted to charge more for shows and because they wanted to bundle some crappy shows with better ones. Apple told them to SIOOMA.
The music labels don't care about making things easier for the customer or about fair play. They care about one thing only, squeezing as much money out of each song as they can get away with. Apple is standing in their way and they know that if Apple beats them, they are done for. So buy from Amazon and from other vendors if you want to make more money for the music labels. I am going to buy the bulk of my music from iTunes. The time has come for the music labels to be put down. Every song you buy from iTunes, is one more nail in the coffin of the old music industry.
Those greedy bustards are biting at their own behinds. As Apple grows larger, they'll wish they hadn't struck out on their own and come back begging when their own strategy fails.
You'd figure they'd be happy to sit back and let Apple take care of all the paperwork and servers and such and just share in the profits. But no, they have to figure, if Apple can do it, they can easily do it and get all the profit. We'll see how well they do. They'd still be back in the Stone Ages if it wasn't for Apple. Ungrateful louts.
Perception is very important. The average consumer doesn't understand what's happening any more than some here There is a political threat going on. I've said that others might try to duplicate what Universal is doing, and quite a few here said that it would never happen. Well, it is.
.
Yes I argued with you on this point and you may very well be right.
I still think that 100 million iPod users will be hard to ignore but the record and movie studios are fighting very hard on this issue.
When I met my wife we had so much fun using Napster, because it was fun. Name one song, you can get it in a snap.
I didn't convert more than 50 CDs to MP3. Too much work, no time, never listen to this music anymore...
When iPod arrived I bought one (Now I don't count anymore!!). When iTunes Music Store opened, I purchased right away music. Why? So convenient, so fast so easy and reliability was perfect. Peer to peer prepared me to use iTunes in fact. Speed was not strongest point and quality even less!!
Why did I stop buying CDs in first place? Space. I don't even know what to do with all those CDs, DVDs, and other boxes our modern life makes us buy. I stopped buying DVDs after I spent $20000 in furnitures to store them. For what?
Basically they are useless, last time I watched a DVD??? I don't even remember. I am thinking selling all of them on eBay.
Now to go back to the topic. I think these companies have a big problem. They are useless. They don't find new talents, they just make money for the profit of their shareholders, they bring nothing to the customers. They even want to make their life uneasy.
I believe Apple huge success and trend is because nobody has no time to mess with unfinished product like PCs. When they use iPod they have everything, when they use iPhone they rediscover the Phone, same when those people discover the mac. PC for the office, the mac at home. When you have no time to waste or don't want to be an IT (I am one!!) buy a mac, otherwise... buy a Mac (if you don't you are simply unlucky). Honestly who cares about installing a driver??
So I am not afraid of customers leaving Apple because there will be less content. I believe customers won't want to change from an easy solution to something too complex. Think about it! Why do you buy something? Because the sales guy won't put tons of restrictions between me and the product (carry the reference, have stock, payments is easy,...). So if the content is not on iTunes, I don't buy. Why would I make my life too complicated, I'll spend my money wih someone else on iTunes. So if the Majors quit iTunes, they may loose their spot and never regain it.
When you think Mika was refused by Majors, it makes me wonder how useful those people really are. And now they indeed show Apple the way to go. I think they understood that Apple will take their spot. Artists will start up direct relationship with Apple. No big deal!
Comments
If any of you owned warner music you would be singing a completely different tune.
imagine you sell product X until everyone learns how to get it for free, then a company comes along and says it can convince people who are getting your product for free to pay for it. you play along until you realize that you're stuck working with a monopoly [how far is iTunes from a monopoly?] you want competition, and someone [amazon, napster, etc] comes along and says they'll play the way you want them to. WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
The major complaint with the labels is that they don't have a vision anymore. Their vision for the last ten years has been to convert people to a pay - per - play model at a time where music was becoming more readily available over the internet for free.
I do own NBC stock... ok it is a very small part of GE... and it troubles me that they are stuck in the same problem that the record industry was-- they are stuck on a business model of providing entertainment exactly good enough for consumers to watch through the commercials, in an environment that they control.
What the record companies (and TV distributors... and eventually movies) need to determine is how they will chose to add value in the future if they can't compete in the pure distribution and advertising sales market. Many of those companies do actually have strengths in promoting and helping to deliver a product for the consumer. Or, they can compete with Apple and offer the content directly-- it's a question of short term and long-term objectives and profits.
They are perfectly happy for you to do 6)
#6 was to purchase CD's
However, I do most of my purchasing late at night when bored, can't get to sleep. Not in the clear light of day. I rarely buy a CD unless I want it in a very high bit rate form. I'm betting I can get as good a music from the indies.
maybe they can buy apple records and sign musicians for iTunes only distribution... then they can take ALL of the Record Label's coin.
I believe they pretty much bought out Apple Records when they settled the lawsuit with that company recently. I'm hoping Apple does become a music label.
Let's not kid ourselves about this.
This is a far bigger problem for Apple than most people can seem to see.
...
My wife and I watch the Sci-Fi channel. Our DVR just died, and all of the content died along with it. Normally, we will buy shows from iTunes if somehow we miss it. If that's no longer going to be possible, we will find other ways, and places, we can buy those shows. We won't be the only ones. Apple will lose big from this.
It's not the first time that Job's rigidity has cost him. I fear it won't be the last.
But what may also be food-for-thought is that, as Apple only gets around 5% per item and the media company gets around 10x this, the media Company will be 'losing' more rapidly!
I'd really like to see musicians and filmmakers start dumping their labels and studios and start self-distributing over the internet. The big labels/studios just get in the way and piss everyone off anyway.
While iTunes customers will miss some of the music they already have their iPod and have already invested money into downloaded music for it. Who really believes that they will drop the iPod simply to get an album or two from Warner. A few friends get together and buy the CD, rip it to all of their computers (plus burn a CD for everyone) and load the CD into their iPod.
Warner has nothing to gain if you're pragmatic and a lot to loose - especially their most important performers who will be looking to move to an iTunes friendly label when their contract expires.
The missing piece is the iTunes Music Label.
Personally, I'd love to see music stay at .99 a song and see musicians get more of a cut per song because there's no longer a middle man between artist and distributor (record companies).
It will be interesting to see whether Radiohead platforms the new album to iTunes for some exclusive period before making it available on CD; the choose-your-own-price deal has been a good stunt, but it's not going to last forever.
I would love to see more artists control their own catalogs and then make deals with iTunes, Amazon, distributors, etc., on their own terms.
I agree 100 percent. I should have mentioned that I was not alluding to the "choose-your-own price" stunt which Radiohead did rather than just the fact that they went on their own on the internet to sell music.
I too hope Apple starts dealing directly with big name artists.
They are perfectly happy for you to do 6)
What about used CDs of of ebay?
What about used CDs of of ebay?
I considered that the same as swapping (i think she had that number 7
but i am not going back to look)
thank you, but wasn't your point that losing content from the iTunes store
would cause Apple to lose computer sales?
It's not really losing sales in a tangible way, you can't lose sales that you haven't made yet.
It's really losing an avenue for marketing. The point is that the content might help draw in people in that might eventually buy their computers. It's kind of a tenuous chain though, I don't think anyone's nailed down exactly how strong the halo effect is or how much of it is a factor in buying a computer. Anyways, once this person drawn in by the iPod/iTunes/store becomes a computer customer, they probably aren't going to jump ship soon.
Meanwhile, Universal Music Group -- the world's largest collection of record labels -- told Apple earlier this year that it would not renew its yearly exclusive contract and instead would go month-to-month so it could be free to deal with other distributors.
The more distributors, the better. And month-to-month still works.
These content providers are going to let their greed ruin a good thing. Have they forgotten the good old days when everyone just stole their music and there was no alternative to over priced CDs?
Your argument isn't very impressive. Show us where they are charging more? They aren't. In fact, they forced Apple to LOWER prices. That was a first. And don't think that Apple didn't do that because they were concerned about this new DRM-free service from Amazon, because you would be wrong about that.
People like you are a very small minority. The general public simply isn't interested in these battles. All they want is to get their content. If it isn't on iTunes any longer, they will get from where i'ts gone. Don't think otherwise.
Beating iTunes is not going to be easy. The music labels are free to reinvent the wheel if they want. Don't believe for a second that they are doing so because they want to give the customer more choice. As for DRM, I believe Apple was the first one to drop DRM. Had they not dropped it first, Amazon would not be selling DRM free music now. DRM was something that the music industry insisted on, not Apple. The reason that Amazon is able to sell music without DRM is that Universal and other labels want to compete against Apple and the iTunes store. They know that they are weak as long as iTunes is the market leader. They want to kill iTunes so they can charge more, not less. The music labels want to charge us more for the new stuff, something that Apple refused to do. NBC left iTunes because they wanted to charge more for shows and because they wanted to bundle some crappy shows with better ones. Apple told them to SIOOMA.
The music labels don't care about making things easier for the customer or about fair play. They care about one thing only, squeezing as much money out of each song as they can get away with. Apple is standing in their way and they know that if Apple beats them, they are done for. So buy from Amazon and from other vendors if you want to make more money for the music labels. I am going to buy the bulk of my music from iTunes. The time has come for the music labels to be put down. Every song you buy from iTunes, is one more nail in the coffin of the old music industry.
You'd figure they'd be happy to sit back and let Apple take care of all the paperwork and servers and such and just share in the profits. But no, they have to figure, if Apple can do it, they can easily do it and get all the profit. We'll see how well they do. They'd still be back in the Stone Ages if it wasn't for Apple. Ungrateful louts.
Perception is very important. The average consumer doesn't understand what's happening any more than some here There is a political threat going on. I've said that others might try to duplicate what Universal is doing, and quite a few here said that it would never happen. Well, it is.
.
Yes I argued with you on this point and you may very well be right.
I still think that 100 million iPod users will be hard to ignore but the record and movie studios are fighting very hard on this issue.
I own 100s of CDs. I stopped counting.
When I met my wife we had so much fun using Napster, because it was fun. Name one song, you can get it in a snap.
I didn't convert more than 50 CDs to MP3. Too much work, no time, never listen to this music anymore...
When iPod arrived I bought one (Now I don't count anymore!!). When iTunes Music Store opened, I purchased right away music. Why? So convenient, so fast so easy and reliability was perfect. Peer to peer prepared me to use iTunes in fact. Speed was not strongest point and quality even less!!
Why did I stop buying CDs in first place? Space. I don't even know what to do with all those CDs, DVDs, and other boxes our modern life makes us buy. I stopped buying DVDs after I spent $20000 in furnitures to store them. For what?
Basically they are useless, last time I watched a DVD??? I don't even remember. I am thinking selling all of them on eBay.
Now to go back to the topic. I think these companies have a big problem. They are useless. They don't find new talents, they just make money for the profit of their shareholders, they bring nothing to the customers. They even want to make their life uneasy.
I believe Apple huge success and trend is because nobody has no time to mess with unfinished product like PCs. When they use iPod they have everything, when they use iPhone they rediscover the Phone, same when those people discover the mac. PC for the office, the mac at home. When you have no time to waste or don't want to be an IT (I am one!!) buy a mac, otherwise... buy a Mac (if you don't you are simply unlucky). Honestly who cares about installing a driver??
So I am not afraid of customers leaving Apple because there will be less content. I believe customers won't want to change from an easy solution to something too complex. Think about it! Why do you buy something? Because the sales guy won't put tons of restrictions between me and the product (carry the reference, have stock, payments is easy,...). So if the content is not on iTunes, I don't buy. Why would I make my life too complicated, I'll spend my money wih someone else on iTunes. So if the Majors quit iTunes, they may loose their spot and never regain it.
When you think Mika was refused by Majors, it makes me wonder how useful those people really are. And now they indeed show Apple the way to go. I think they understood that Apple will take their spot. Artists will start up direct relationship with Apple. No big deal!