Hmm... looks like even if you have an Amazon account and have bought from them in the past, it double verifies your billing address and restricts the address to the US. You also cannot pay with Paypal.
From the Amazon MP3 TOS: "As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States."
Sucks.
Looks like I'm back to buying iTunes gift certificates on eBay.
Hmm... looks like even if you have an Amazon account and have bought from them in the past, it double verifies your billing address and restricts the address to the US. You also cannot pay with Paypal.
From the Amazon MP3 TOS: "As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States."
Sucks.
Looks like I'm back to buying iTunes gift certificates on eBay.
So from this it seems that all the Labels, except EMI, have locked themselves into selling DRM free music in the US only, instead of to the wide range of countries that iTunes operates in. Unless of course, as others have mentioned, SJ makes an announcement at Macworld. Mind you, I'm in South Korea so I can't access either as I don't have a credit card from an iTunes based country.
Could you clarify this statement. It sounds funny. "They (Apple) never cared about money from music sales". Please. So if Apple doesn't care about "the money" I am assuming that any little bit of money earned is being spent on those less fortunate than us (maybe those reading this topic on a Windows computer).
Apple hardly made ANY money from music sales. Out of every 99 cent track about 60-70 cents went to the label (depending on size. Indies usually got the lower end of the range). Another few cents went to the Artist. Of the remaining 25-35 cents, Apple had to pay for bandwidth, development, customer care, servers, storage, and maintenance of the iTS. Assuming this cost another 5 cents per song, (VERY conservative estimate, I think) that would mean they made about 20-30 cents a song. Considering they took a few years to sell a billion songs, they made about 200 million profit in a few years. Considering Apple's growth in other areas, this was actually a VERY slow moving part of their business, and probably slowing growth (wasting resources that could be used in faster growing areas).
What iTunes did, was prevent the proliferation of WMA crap which macs would not play, or at least not well (thanks MS) and more importantly, introduce digital to a new audience, by making it Extremely easy. They also made iPods more popular since finding music for ipods became very easy.
None of these advantages are lost because of Amazon, since a) DRM free MP3s are first class citizens on macs, b) Most of the world is now not afraid of downloading music, and c) with Amazon's iTunes integration, the ease of use of the iPod ecosystem still exists. It is now essentially iPod+iTunes+Amazon instead of iPod+iTunes+iTs.
The major (and probably only, unless Amazon shifts to DRM free WMA) benefit Apple now derives from iTs over Amazon is that with more people going to iTs rather than Amazon, they are likely to sell more digital videos, making iPods slightly more popular. However, at this point this seems like such a miniscule number of people, its really no big loss for Apple.
However, very soon, once this experiment is over, expect to see all these labels on board iTunes. Like others have mentioned, labels dont want to screw themselves over by selling DRM free in the most popular store, if DRM free tracks were to fail. Amazon is a test run, because the execs will face a ton of shareholder lawsuits if these labels decide that DRM free is good, but keep it away from the most popular digital store in the world.
Anyway irrelevant, I'm just putting the finishing touches to my new MP3 download company, watch out Apple and Amazon, there's a new player in town thats gonna spank all your asses. Let the best man win
The recent article in Wired on the origins of the iPhone was interesting, not least because it suggested that Apple knew it would have to move beyond the iPod with the likelihood of convergence devices. I wonder if iPod has had its hey day, and had served Apple well enough in generating awareness of the Mac, and giving the iPhone the welcome it has received. Then again, i suppose the iPod has been a great cash cow, and probably still has a number of years ahead of it. Who knows though really. I just hope things keep going well for Apple; I remember the dark ages in the early 1990s, and they were not good times. So far, i've never owned a PC (the closest being my macbook pro), and hope I never have too. But that's all off track. I agree with the sentiment that this is not a bad thing for Apple, and may in fact be a good thing.
Good side; the downloader was very well made, and like advertised, sent the MP3 into my iTunes, complete with tags and album art.
Bad side: I got the wrong song. I selected By the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf. The receipt claims that is what I bought. The actual song I received; I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) by Meatloaf. Right artist, wrong album, wrong song. One out of three isn't...who am I kidding. I wound up buying the song from iTunes, cus...well I've never had that problem with Apple. I'll try Amazon again in the future.
The recent article in Wired on the origins of the iPhone was interesting, not least because it suggested that Apple knew it would have to move beyond the iPod with the likelihood of convergence devices. .
I never understand why people find that surprising, I could have told them from day one that mobiles will eventually kill the iPod.
Just like the mobile will kill microsoft in fewer years than many suspect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy Brown
So far, i've never owned a PC (the closest being my macbook pro), and hope I never have too.
Nor me, and I never will, I had 5 computers before getting a mac, and none were a PC, my evolution is thus... ZX81, sinclair spectrum 48k, spectrum 128k, Texas Instruments TI994a, Atari ST, LCII, G3 Tower, Pismo G3, iMac, Pismo G4, G4Tower, MacBook.
I smell two things. 1. collusion between the record labels "anybody but apple" which I believe is illegal.
and 2. the record labels looking for a scape goat, as in "see EU, Apple IS EVIL"
No, the EU is correct, Apple prices all their products differently all over the EU (and it is not just the VAT differences either), and we should be able to take advantage of purchasing from the cheaper EU store.
1. As long as the Amazon music store is US only, it will not damage iTS dominance as badly as many people think.
2. As many have already pointed out, Amazon and iTunes have always played nice with each other.
3. With deals like the iTunes / Starbucks collaboration as an example, Apple will always find ways to keep iTunes interesting for consumers.
Having said all that, you have to admit that that the labels offering tracks through Amazon as MP3 instead of AAC is a pretty brilliant PR move, given that most consumers view AAC as an Apple-only technology.
It is good for the consumer, however from my persective it angers me that the "big 4" are doing this and excluding Apple (unless MacWorld brings something) Because of this I will not be using the Amazon store and will be sourcing my DRM free music elsewhere.
Do you smell that? Smells like fat record execs dieing
As soon as you burn those purchases to CD and then rip them back into iTunes. Depending on how many protected AAC files you have, it might just be the work of a single evening. And yet, a month from now, there will still be people asking that same question.
Except that that procedure loses you quality unless you rip back into a larger, uncompressed or losslessly compressed format. The only way to get the original AAC data in unlocked format is to use QTFairUse or MyFairTunes, both of which only work on Windows.
This information has been available for many years, and yet people still make the "burn to CD and rip back" suggestion.
Having said all that, you have to admit that that the labels offering tracks through Amazon as MP3 instead of AAC is a pretty brilliant PR move, given that most consumers view AAC as an Apple-only technology.
You know, I've always thought that the biggest mistake the MPEG-LA made with AAC was calling it AAC rather than mp4. If it was called mp4, you can bet that everyone would have moved to it by now, because as every consumer "knows", bigger numbers = better.
Anyway, it would be nice if Amazon moved to a system like allofmp3, allowing you to choose the format you wish to purchase. It surprises me that Amazon and Emusic only offer mp3 and not AAC, as they have to pay royalties for selling tracks in mp3 format, but not for selling them in AAC format.
Anyway irrelevant, I'm just putting the finishing touches to my new MP3 download company, watch out Apple and Amazon, there's a new player in town thats gonna spank all your asses. Let the best man win
Well if you can sell British catalogue tracks in a format other than protected WMA to customers without a UK billing address, then you've got a customer.
If 7Digital didn't sell worthless protected WMA, I would have bought hundreds of tracks from them that I can't get anywhere else, mostly B-sides.
You're quite right. I had thought about it before, but reminded my self about it after reading the wired article.
My computers have been in reverse: currently Macbook pro, clamshell ibook, a DV CRT iMac, Power Macintosh 5400, Power Macintosh 6100. These were ones which were actually mine, otherwise my dad had numerous other macs going back to the first one. I'm pretty sure he bought an an osborn 1 when it first came out too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by monstrosity
I never understand why people find that surprising, I could have told them from day one that mobiles will eventually kill the iPod.
Just like the mobile will kill microsoft in fewer years than many suspect.
Nor me, and I never will, I had 5 computers before getting a mac, and none were a PC, my evolution is thus... ZX81, sinclair spectrum 48k, spectrum 128k, Texas Instruments TI994a, Atari ST, LCII, G3 Tower, Pismo G3, iMac, Pismo G4, G4Tower, MacBook.
If the complaint against apple is price, why is amazon still selling for the same 99 cents?
Maybe Amazon is paying the record companies 20 c for each song sold, just to undermine apple.
Jokes aside, it must be (well, may be) either that Amazon is getting less for each song than Apple would, or that Amazon is getting the same amount, but that the record companies decided it would be better in the long term to breakdown Apple's share of the market.
Jokes aside, it must be (well, may be) either that Amazon is getting less for each song than Apple would, or that Amazon is getting the same amount, but that the record companies decided it would be better in the long term to breakdown Apple's share of the market.
Some possibilities:
? Amazon is using the Wal-Mart model of selling music at a loss to get you in the store/website.
? This is just a promotional period. Once they feel they have you they will start variable pricing based on popularity.
? The record labels want to bring down iTunes at all costs. By leveling the playing field they think Apple that will bend to 'their' will finally.
? They are are managed by manatees using management balls.
I've avoided the Amazon store so far - mostly out of principal. I love the idea of the DRM free music, but I hate the fact that the record companies are excluding Apple, and for all we know giving Amazon a better deal.
It would seem to me that the point for the record labels is to break Apple's monopoly on downloadable music, and not eliminate them all together. Giving Amazon DRM free MP3's breaks the monopoly...
I know Apple doesn't make much (if anything) from the music store, but I sure like the iTunes shopping experience, and I would like to continue getting my music from Apple.
I really hope Steve announces that we can get the same DRM-free music at iTunes that you can get from Amazon.
I guess I have to be one to buck trend here, and yes I know this is an Apple site. However I find the use of iTunes horrid for buying tracks, and very inconvenient, at home I have an AMD box running Ubuntu, but even if I were running Windows on it, I would NEVER, EVER install iTunes on Windows. iTunes on Windows is just too bloated and useless, takes up a ton of unnecessary RAM, even when it is not running. I installed it once for a friend who insisted I install it for them, and when it was done I thought I had installed AOL with all the background apps that it had to run, and all the files that ran at startup, one of which I couldn't get to not run at startup no matter what I tried.
Amazon on the other hand, requires no installation, and I use their site anyway for other purchases all the time as it is. Their mp3 store is just painless for me.
I also did not own an iPod until recently, and really if I had a choice again I would still not own one, however it was free with the purchase of a new machine for work here so I said what the heck. It has hardware lock up issues all the time, spends tons of power when powered down, I leave it for a week without playing and the headphones unplugged, and it is at half charge at best, and yes I put on the hold button when I shut it off so that it doesn't turn on accidentally.
So for me this is the best news I have heard in a long time, there are just some artists I don't want a whole cd from, and some others that release a song for download 3-5 months ahead of the release, and I want that song on a cd much sooner. And as has been said, the burn and rip method sucks, the songs come out sounding flat and just off, and they don't even sound that great on the cd, however mp3's sound fine in my car when I burn them to a cd, maybe if Apple used VBR instead of CBR on the download tracks that may be better, but other than file size the difference in quality is not enough for me to notice, especially not on cheap headphones coming out of a low snr connection on an iPod or other mp3 device. And for home ripping I prefer Vorbis anyway, even better compression above 64kb and better sound I think when burned back to a cd.
Comments
From the Amazon MP3 TOS: "As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States."
Sucks.
Looks like I'm back to buying iTunes gift certificates on eBay.
Hmm... looks like even if you have an Amazon account and have bought from them in the past, it double verifies your billing address and restricts the address to the US. You also cannot pay with Paypal.
From the Amazon MP3 TOS: "As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United States."
Sucks.
Looks like I'm back to buying iTunes gift certificates on eBay.
So from this it seems that all the Labels, except EMI, have locked themselves into selling DRM free music in the US only, instead of to the wide range of countries that iTunes operates in. Unless of course, as others have mentioned, SJ makes an announcement at Macworld. Mind you, I'm in South Korea so I can't access either as I don't have a credit card from an iTunes based country.
Has any of these conglomerates ever stopped and asked themselves What would the consumer want?
I suppose Apple should stop and ask the same thing, because the answer sure isn't a music file that can only be played on their device.
Where is the poor, fucking consumer in all of this? Nowhere, that's where.
Think about that when you pay the salary of some fat music bastard in a suit sniffing coke and getting a blowjob in a hotel somewhere in downtown LA.
Could you clarify this statement. It sounds funny. "They (Apple) never cared about money from music sales". Please. So if Apple doesn't care about "the money" I am assuming that any little bit of money earned is being spent on those less fortunate than us (maybe those reading this topic on a Windows computer
Apple hardly made ANY money from music sales. Out of every 99 cent track about 60-70 cents went to the label (depending on size. Indies usually got the lower end of the range). Another few cents went to the Artist. Of the remaining 25-35 cents, Apple had to pay for bandwidth, development, customer care, servers, storage, and maintenance of the iTS. Assuming this cost another 5 cents per song, (VERY conservative estimate, I think) that would mean they made about 20-30 cents a song. Considering they took a few years to sell a billion songs, they made about 200 million profit in a few years. Considering Apple's growth in other areas, this was actually a VERY slow moving part of their business, and probably slowing growth (wasting resources that could be used in faster growing areas).
What iTunes did, was prevent the proliferation of WMA crap which macs would not play, or at least not well (thanks MS) and more importantly, introduce digital to a new audience, by making it Extremely easy. They also made iPods more popular since finding music for ipods became very easy.
None of these advantages are lost because of Amazon, since a) DRM free MP3s are first class citizens on macs, b) Most of the world is now not afraid of downloading music, and c) with Amazon's iTunes integration, the ease of use of the iPod ecosystem still exists. It is now essentially iPod+iTunes+Amazon instead of iPod+iTunes+iTs.
The major (and probably only, unless Amazon shifts to DRM free WMA) benefit Apple now derives from iTs over Amazon is that with more people going to iTs rather than Amazon, they are likely to sell more digital videos, making iPods slightly more popular. However, at this point this seems like such a miniscule number of people, its really no big loss for Apple.
However, very soon, once this experiment is over, expect to see all these labels on board iTunes. Like others have mentioned, labels dont want to screw themselves over by selling DRM free in the most popular store, if DRM free tracks were to fail. Amazon is a test run, because the execs will face a ton of shareholder lawsuits if these labels decide that DRM free is good, but keep it away from the most popular digital store in the world.
Good side; the downloader was very well made, and like advertised, sent the MP3 into my iTunes, complete with tags and album art.
Bad side: I got the wrong song. I selected By the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf. The receipt claims that is what I bought. The actual song I received; I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) by Meatloaf. Right artist, wrong album, wrong song. One out of three isn't...who am I kidding. I wound up buying the song from iTunes, cus...well I've never had that problem with Apple. I'll try Amazon again in the future.
The recent article in Wired on the origins of the iPhone was interesting, not least because it suggested that Apple knew it would have to move beyond the iPod with the likelihood of convergence devices. .
I never understand why people find that surprising, I could have told them from day one that mobiles will eventually kill the iPod.
Just like the mobile will kill microsoft in fewer years than many suspect.
So far, i've never owned a PC (the closest being my macbook pro), and hope I never have too.
Nor me, and I never will, I had 5 computers before getting a mac, and none were a PC, my evolution is thus... ZX81, sinclair spectrum 48k, spectrum 128k, Texas Instruments TI994a, Atari ST, LCII, G3 Tower, Pismo G3, iMac, Pismo G4, G4Tower, MacBook.
I smell two things. 1. collusion between the record labels "anybody but apple" which I believe is illegal.
and 2. the record labels looking for a scape goat, as in "see EU, Apple IS EVIL"
No, the EU is correct, Apple prices all their products differently all over the EU (and it is not just the VAT differences either), and we should be able to take advantage of purchasing from the cheaper EU store.
2. As many have already pointed out, Amazon and iTunes have always played nice with each other.
3. With deals like the iTunes / Starbucks collaboration as an example, Apple will always find ways to keep iTunes interesting for consumers.
Having said all that, you have to admit that that the labels offering tracks through Amazon as MP3 instead of AAC is a pretty brilliant PR move, given that most consumers view AAC as an Apple-only technology.
It is good for the consumer, however from my persective it angers me that the "big 4" are doing this and excluding Apple (unless MacWorld brings something) Because of this I will not be using the Amazon store and will be sourcing my DRM free music elsewhere.
Do you smell that? Smells like fat record execs dieing
As soon as you burn those purchases to CD and then rip them back into iTunes. Depending on how many protected AAC files you have, it might just be the work of a single evening. And yet, a month from now, there will still be people asking that same question.
Except that that procedure loses you quality unless you rip back into a larger, uncompressed or losslessly compressed format. The only way to get the original AAC data in unlocked format is to use QTFairUse or MyFairTunes, both of which only work on Windows.
This information has been available for many years, and yet people still make the "burn to CD and rip back" suggestion.
Having said all that, you have to admit that that the labels offering tracks through Amazon as MP3 instead of AAC is a pretty brilliant PR move, given that most consumers view AAC as an Apple-only technology.
You know, I've always thought that the biggest mistake the MPEG-LA made with AAC was calling it AAC rather than mp4. If it was called mp4, you can bet that everyone would have moved to it by now, because as every consumer "knows", bigger numbers = better.
Anyway, it would be nice if Amazon moved to a system like allofmp3, allowing you to choose the format you wish to purchase. It surprises me that Amazon and Emusic only offer mp3 and not AAC, as they have to pay royalties for selling tracks in mp3 format, but not for selling them in AAC format.
Anyway irrelevant, I'm just putting the finishing touches to my new MP3 download company, watch out Apple and Amazon, there's a new player in town thats gonna spank all your asses. Let the best man win
Well if you can sell British catalogue tracks in a format other than protected WMA to customers without a UK billing address, then you've got a customer.
If 7Digital didn't sell worthless protected WMA, I would have bought hundreds of tracks from them that I can't get anywhere else, mostly B-sides.
My computers have been in reverse: currently Macbook pro, clamshell ibook, a DV CRT iMac, Power Macintosh 5400, Power Macintosh 6100. These were ones which were actually mine, otherwise my dad had numerous other macs going back to the first one. I'm pretty sure he bought an an osborn 1 when it first came out too.
I never understand why people find that surprising, I could have told them from day one that mobiles will eventually kill the iPod.
Just like the mobile will kill microsoft in fewer years than many suspect.
Nor me, and I never will, I had 5 computers before getting a mac, and none were a PC, my evolution is thus... ZX81, sinclair spectrum 48k, spectrum 128k, Texas Instruments TI994a, Atari ST, LCII, G3 Tower, Pismo G3, iMac, Pismo G4, G4Tower, MacBook.
If the complaint against apple is price, why is amazon still selling for the same 99 cents?
Maybe Amazon is paying the record companies 20 c for each song sold, just to undermine apple.
Jokes aside, it must be (well, may be) either that Amazon is getting less for each song than Apple would, or that Amazon is getting the same amount, but that the record companies decided it would be better in the long term to breakdown Apple's share of the market.
Jokes aside, it must be (well, may be) either that Amazon is getting less for each song than Apple would, or that Amazon is getting the same amount, but that the record companies decided it would be better in the long term to breakdown Apple's share of the market.
Some possibilities:
? Amazon is using the Wal-Mart model of selling music at a loss to get you in the store/website.
? This is just a promotional period. Once they feel they have you they will start variable pricing based on popularity.
? The record labels want to bring down iTunes at all costs. By leveling the playing field they think Apple that will bend to 'their' will finally.
? They are are managed by manatees using management balls.
It would seem to me that the point for the record labels is to break Apple's monopoly on downloadable music, and not eliminate them all together. Giving Amazon DRM free MP3's breaks the monopoly...
I know Apple doesn't make much (if anything) from the music store, but I sure like the iTunes shopping experience, and I would like to continue getting my music from Apple.
I really hope Steve announces that we can get the same DRM-free music at iTunes that you can get from Amazon.
This whole thing realy pi**es me off...
Amazon on the other hand, requires no installation, and I use their site anyway for other purchases all the time as it is. Their mp3 store is just painless for me.
I also did not own an iPod until recently, and really if I had a choice again I would still not own one, however it was free with the purchase of a new machine for work here so I said what the heck. It has hardware lock up issues all the time, spends tons of power when powered down, I leave it for a week without playing and the headphones unplugged, and it is at half charge at best, and yes I put on the hold button when I shut it off so that it doesn't turn on accidentally.
So for me this is the best news I have heard in a long time, there are just some artists I don't want a whole cd from, and some others that release a song for download 3-5 months ahead of the release, and I want that song on a cd much sooner. And as has been said, the burn and rip method sucks, the songs come out sounding flat and just off, and they don't even sound that great on the cd, however mp3's sound fine in my car when I burn them to a cd, maybe if Apple used VBR instead of CBR on the download tracks that may be better, but other than file size the difference in quality is not enough for me to notice, especially not on cheap headphones coming out of a low snr connection on an iPod or other mp3 device. And for home ripping I prefer Vorbis anyway, even better compression above 64kb and better sound I think when burned back to a cd.
[/rant]