Tweet
And you know what I think...this could be GREAT! 
Only one thing: iTunes must have some above-critical market share, and I even don't know at what point this would be...however something tells me that this point has been reached and iTunes sales are very notable...suits from music industry (oh boy, how I love this term) wouldn't care about iTunes otherwise...
Not commenting their ridiculous claims of wanting part of iPod revenues...
But: it looks like, now that iTunes is succesfull (I hope it is succesfull enough), they want more, they want every penny that they can get out of it (who could have thought that...
). So, that's where their demands of raising price for certain songs come from.
And anyway, putting aside the fact that iTunes is not lossless and don't give you physical thing, than 1$ (or...1€ , typical; OTOH Canadians are probably happy) for track is quite good price for them IMHO...multiply it by number of tracks on CD and you are at about CD price, but without associated costs; HOWEVER, there's one very important thing: on todays popular, driven by big labels, CDs, rarely more than 2 or 3 tracks are worth listening to, so they can't sell so much shit through iTunes and get so much money. They want more. And Jobs looks right now that he won't adress their claims. OTOH menagers on the other side are threatening to pull the plug on iTunes. This could lead us to some interesting vision...
But first, some conspiratory theories
Why the industry got into iTunes in the first place? Hmmm...probably so they could repel the arguments that they don't have anything comparable to offer in face of p2p sharing (lets face it - it's simply convenient, be it p2p or iTunes). And they've hoped it wouldn't fly anyway ("see? we told you those internets folks are only into stealing"). Now when they see it's working, they apparently...try to kill it by raising prices. Their arguments could sound reasonable at first, but ridiculous claims about iPod shares reveals that they really want to put forward things that Apple, nor any company for that matter, won't listen to. But anyway, they'll be able to pull out, point at "quarrelsome" Apple, and be done with almost the same conclusion: "we've tried, we really did, but you saw for yourself it's impossible to make money because of stealing - and we aren't a charity, we can't keep prices so low". Overall...they never wanted it to succed, because they can't get so much money out of it than out of full CDs with 2 good (yeah...I'm an optimist it seems) tracks on them. Perhaps the biggest offense to them is that they don't control it, iTunes can stand on its own, promote artists and distribute their music and so on...
So I think (hope?) it's too late now. Jobs is too strong (especially since he has few aces in his hand, for example Pixar). If record labels wil pull out, he'll go directly to artists, he'll promote independent ones (that actually produce good music...), or simply the ones that aren't tied by cyrographs. Perhaps iTunes has enough marketshare to be able to promote it's own artists... And eventually some first-class citizens of that group would also come...
I hope the labels won't quit their claims. Perhaps finally we'll be able to get rid of them... (in their current form)
OTOH...it's just business, so Apple will eventually do what they want, probably. However...it looks like Jobs at least wants this to take as long time as possible, which also means that record labels loose (in eyes of customers), Apple wins, somehow...so they could do what I described anyway in one form or another!
In any case, it's a loose for music insustry - they simply don't have anything comparable, something that lets you buy "on impulse", the moment you want it/heard it. If people can't do that, I think they won't go back to buying CDs, they look at p2p again and will find some interest in new, unknown, but good music at iTunes store.
Only one thing: iTunes must have some above-critical market share, and I even don't know at what point this would be...however something tells me that this point has been reached and iTunes sales are very notable...suits from music industry (oh boy, how I love this term) wouldn't care about iTunes otherwise...
Not commenting their ridiculous claims of wanting part of iPod revenues...
But: it looks like, now that iTunes is succesfull (I hope it is succesfull enough), they want more, they want every penny that they can get out of it (who could have thought that...
). So, that's where their demands of raising price for certain songs come from.And anyway, putting aside the fact that iTunes is not lossless and don't give you physical thing, than 1$ (or...1€
, typical; OTOH Canadians are probably happy) for track is quite good price for them IMHO...multiply it by number of tracks on CD and you are at about CD price, but without associated costs; HOWEVER, there's one very important thing: on todays popular, driven by big labels, CDs, rarely more than 2 or 3 tracks are worth listening to, so they can't sell so much shit through iTunes and get so much money. They want more. And Jobs looks right now that he won't adress their claims. OTOH menagers on the other side are threatening to pull the plug on iTunes. This could lead us to some interesting vision...But first, some conspiratory theories
Why the industry got into iTunes in the first place? Hmmm...probably so they could repel the arguments that they don't have anything comparable to offer in face of p2p sharing (lets face it - it's simply convenient, be it p2p or iTunes). And they've hoped it wouldn't fly anyway ("see? we told you those internets folks are only into stealing"). Now when they see it's working, they apparently...try to kill it by raising prices. Their arguments could sound reasonable at first, but ridiculous claims about iPod shares reveals that they really want to put forward things that Apple, nor any company for that matter, won't listen to. But anyway, they'll be able to pull out, point at "quarrelsome" Apple, and be done with almost the same conclusion: "we've tried, we really did, but you saw for yourself it's impossible to make money because of stealing - and we aren't a charity, we can't keep prices so low". Overall...they never wanted it to succed, because they can't get so much money out of it than out of full CDs with 2 good (yeah...I'm an optimist it seems) tracks on them. Perhaps the biggest offense to them is that they don't control it, iTunes can stand on its own, promote artists and distribute their music and so on...
So I think (hope?) it's too late now. Jobs is too strong (especially since he has few aces in his hand, for example Pixar). If record labels wil pull out, he'll go directly to artists, he'll promote independent ones (that actually produce good music...), or simply the ones that aren't tied by cyrographs. Perhaps iTunes has enough marketshare to be able to promote it's own artists... And eventually some first-class citizens of that group would also come...
I hope the labels won't quit their claims. Perhaps finally we'll be able to get rid of them... (in their current form)
OTOH...it's just business, so Apple will eventually do what they want, probably. However...it looks like Jobs at least wants this to take as long time as possible, which also means that record labels loose (in eyes of customers), Apple wins, somehow...so they could do what I described anyway in one form or another!
In any case, it's a loose for music insustry - they simply don't have anything comparable, something that lets you buy "on impulse", the moment you want it/heard it. If people can't do that, I think they won't go back to buying CDs, they look at p2p again and will find some interest in new, unknown, but good music at iTunes store.
Comment