Should iTMS be selective in it's offerings?

satchmo · October 17, 2003 9:45PM

Jobs' noted that Apple didn't want to just throw in "crap" music onto their site. While this sounds all good intentioned, musical tastes are so varied and "good" music is subjective.

So I ask..does this make iTMS somewhat elitist? Who becomes the music editor?...Jobs himself? What makes the cut and how? If you're an independant artist, do you have to buy your way into iTMS (or any other online music service for that matter)?

bauman · October 17, 2003 9:52PM

Perhaps a better qualifier would be 'talented'. It's easy to pick out those who have absolutely no talent, even if you aren't a fan of the music itself. Of course, even that is subjective... I wouldn't know what makes one heavy metal / screamer band more talented than anther.

pesi · October 17, 2003 10:44PM

that remark by Jobs didn't sit well with me at first, but then i realized exactly what he said and why he said it.

we made the statement to counteract napster's claim of 500,000 songs as opposed to the ITMS's 400,000.

basically, he's saying their extra songs are crap, the result of people paying $40 to get their stuff on there.

what he's saying is that the iTMS may have less songs, but they're songs that people will actually want to buy.

having a ton of songs that nobody wants is not a recipe for success. witness eMusic. which i loved, by the way... before the recent buyout. that said, a lot of the stuff on there was pure crap. the addition of 200+ indies to iTMS will help me with my fix though.

dog almighty · October 17, 2003 11:17PM

They still don't have Ani DiFranco, Midnight Oil, Radiohead or The Pogues.

"Did you mean The Posies?" **** NO. I MEANT SHANE MCGOWAN'S MOSSY-TOOTHED IRISH "KISS-MY-ASS-IN-GAELIC" POGUES.

? before the group split up, though.

EDIT: Wow. Wowdy wow-wow wow. I don't know how long it's been there, but iTunes has a beatles album.

EDIT AGAIN: Check out the Beatles' homepage in the iTMS. "Four lads from Liverpool."

? I'm debating whether to make a silly pun or let it be.

I have to sleep, now?

amorph · October 17, 2003 11:38PM

I jumped when Steve said that: $40 is what CD Baby charges to rip your CD and shop it to the various online stores. If my band gets on iTunes, that's how. This might be to counter the fact that CD Baby itself exercises no editorial control - it's a store, not a label, so it could theoretically become a backdoor for anyone to clutter up iTMS with whatever random crap they plunk out in their basement.

Still... *crosses fingers*

buonrotto · October 17, 2003 11:47PM

As a disclaimer, I didn't watch or read the announcement. Are you sure he wasn't referring to production quality as opposed to musical quality/tastes?

applenut · October 17, 2003 11:54PM

Quote:

Originally posted by BuonRotto

As a disclaimer, I didn't watch or read the announcement. Are you sure he wasn't referring to production quality as opposed to musical quality/tastes?

i watched the event live and that is the interpretation i got. he made it seem like they werent going to bother encoding crappy recordings or bootleg quality shit or excessive versions....

at least thats what i thought.

flounder · October 18, 2003 8:57AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Dog Almighty

They still don't have Ani DiFranco

I e-mailed RBR and they said they have all her stuff and are expecting it up probably next week.

amorph · October 18, 2003 11:09PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tonton

Come on. There's nothing stopping you from buying Fifty Cent on the iTMS. Obviously whoever the "editor" is, isn't very selective.

Well, there's more than one criterion here. Any editor of a site that's trying to attract customers doesn't reject a pop phenom just because he's not quite up to the standards of Invincible or Company Flow.

It's a well-known tradeoff in publishing: Book publishers publish the stuff they know will sell by the millions so that they can publish the stuff they want to, even if it'll only sell by the tens of thousands. That's just how it is. Obviously, the ideal case is that they publish something they want to publish that also sells by the boatload, and that does happen. But most of the time there's at least something of a compromise involved.

Bluntly, I'm delighted that Yo La Tengo is now on iTMS. But from their perspective, how many people would miss YLT vs. 50 cent?

medialab · October 19, 2003 2:01AM

This has been the function of the small independent bookshop for years (right up until the day Walmart and Borders drove em out of business). Publishers put out 40,000 - 60,000 books a year. Stocking Stephen King and Hilary Clinton is a no-brainer. But it takes the talent, taste, diversity, and enthusiasm of committed book-buyers to make decisions about what to stock in their stores. Its not censorship or arrogance. Most of those 40,000 titles are crap. Its their job to find the worthwhile stock.

Apple seems to be taking that stewardship role seriously. I can imagine buymusic.com and Napster being so consumed with dealmaking that they'll stock any title the record labels care to foist upon them. Apple has served notice that they want to be something better.

amorph · October 19, 2003 4:21PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tonton

But here's the difference. Of course Apple is going to host 50 Cent and the "Ketchup Song". What I want is the stuff I can't find in the store. I want that Muse remix that isn't in my local HMV. I want that Bigod 20 Madonna cover that's been out of print for ten years. That's what I used to download on Napster and that's what I wish I could buy *somewhere*. Is it crap music? Who's the judge of that? Sales figures? Bullshit.

You're not disagreeing with me. I said that editors have to choose the titles that sell so that they can afford to publish the stuff they like. It's not either/or, it's both/and.

I'm also hoping that a lot of out of print stuff will become available. There's a Lalo Schifrin LP that hasn't been in print for almost 40 years that I'd love to have a pristine digital copy of. But Apple can't do that unless they also have the moneymakers on board.

The pop stuff subsidizes the interesting/obscure stuff. That's how it's always worked.

Should iTMS be selective in it's offerings?

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