“The iPod has more than 50% of the US market, while iTunes Music Store has been selling 130 million songs per year. Certainly it seems that Apple has everything going for them, but they may in the end lose it in the same manner they lost the desktop market” Rajan R. is editorializing for OSNews’ sister site, New Mobile Computing. On a similar note, Real’s CEO seems to have taken to heart Steve Jobs’ answer to his recent request to open up the DRM format to Real Networks.
Opening iTunes/iPod, Maintaining Dominance
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Copy from what I said at anorther forum:
I do agree with Glaser, like I said in another forum, suppose I would buy a Sony CD and could only play it on a Sony CD player! Apple in this area of music has got as low as M$ and its policy is inconsistent with its overall support of open standards. We as Apple-fans should not turn a blind eye to Apple when they are starting to abuse the market like M$ does, instead we are the ones who should correct them. For me this means no ITMS-songs or or an iPod.
Even if it doesn’t last, it was good for apple in the mean time.
You have a good point. On the other hand, iTunes is the only one that is cross platform. NONE of the other services provide for Macintosh. If Apple did not create iTunes, music services wouldn’t even exist for Apple users. When Steve Jobs responded to the question about other music players, he basically said “no”. What he should have stated was that the iTunes service was more OPEN, because it provided music service for more than just ONE OS.
Matthew24: Well, as a libertarian, I don’t really consider what Apple is doing as immoral. More along the lines of stupid.
m: My original draft was three pages long, I rewrote it and said pretty much the same thing in that length. I took a week to write it 😛 Thanks.
Dan: I never argued that iTunes shouldn’t exist or that Apple should discontinue iTunes. Rather, I argued that Apple should open iTunes/iPod up to competition and make a lot of money from the licensing deals.
At the end of the day, it is only the “richest of us” and the “deafest of us” that are buying iTunes/iPod today.
No one who respects the value of money or time would purchase crippleware music that is inferior quality compared to a CD and also saddled with all sorts of DRM regulations that only lead to misery.
Once the novelty of online music has worn off, the music world will be very different. The day and age of the big Hollywood music oligarch is coming to an end. Their radical actions are driven by the smell in the air — the smell of rapidly approaching extinction.
The hard truth is that in a country with a rapidly declining economy, the seller of luxury goods is irrelevant to the masses. Thus CD sales will continue to drop until they reach a price point which is the “reality” affordable price, not the price the Hollywood oligarchs want to make people pay. Once CD’s are at the “reality” price, online music will be close to free. And then everyone will offer it as the infrastructure will have been commoditized.
So the mainstream user, in not very long, will be able to download basically free music and play it on a variety of affordable players. And/or purchase affordable CD’s.
Thus for Glazer, it is pure marketing tactics to play the Apple gambit.
In the long term, Apple is irrelevant in the music industry unless they change iTunes into something along the lines of MP3.com and start supporting artists directly.
For the present, I certainly wouldn’t spend my hard earned money on an iPod or any iDRM music.
If you want it, tell apple, they’re not mind readers.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html
“The hard truth is that in a country with a rapidly declining economy, the seller of luxury goods is irrelevant to the masses. Thus CD sales will continue to drop until they reach a price point which is the “reality” affordable price, not the price the Hollywood oligarchs want to make people pay. Once CD’s are at the “reality” price, online music will be close to free. And then everyone will offer it as the infrastructure will have been commoditized. ”
hocico, no need to resort to your crypto-marxist analysis of the economy, that stuff is so 1960. I don’t think many people who use the word ‘commoditized’ know what it means. How the ‘infrstructure’ could be commodized, as you put it, I have no idea. It costs non-negligable amounts of money to buy servers/offer downloads, and always will.
If you’d actually read any Marx, or any other mainstream economist, perhaps you wouldn’t publicly air your fantasies about constantly dropping prices. In fact in many ways capitalism works in the reverse sense and prices are sometimes forced upwards – cartels are as much a natural part of the system as the concentration of capital. That’s why we have governments. Just because you want the price of music to tend to zero doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. If it was close to free, I think most musicians wouldn’t bother making music for an audience so selfish it wasn’t prepared to pay.
Me, I’m happy buying music at sites like http://www.magnatune.com and downloading at full quality, it works, today, with an ipod. The iPod does not limit your music use (unless you use Ogg), so don’t bother trying to drag it into the argument. I don’t particularly agree with Apple limiting ‘Fairplay’ to the ipod, but then when others are playing dirty you have to play dirty sometimes to stay in the game. Real and Microsoft will not just roll over and let Apple have this market, they will use every trick they can to take it from them, and Apple doesn’t want to end up as one of the minor players, with a format that not enough people use – *that’s* why they’re pushing AAC so hard.
Listen, this goes back to the fact that Apple is a hardware company. iTMS is there to provide music to be placed on your iPod. The BS about “it is only the “richest of us” and the “deafest of us” that are buying iTunes/iPod today”, is just that BS. I use iTunes but not iTMS, I like the iPod and can afforde to buy one but I havent due to the fact that I’m not that obssesed with music.
How many of the online music stores that are complaining about iTMS share of the market have set it up so that you can load music on to your iPod? RealNetworks is just pissed that they didn’t do it first.
For the record what is keeping you from downloading music from another online store and then importing it into iTunes and then to your iPod. What’s keeping you from downloading the Windows version of iTunes and exporting the music you buy to an mp3 and then importing it into another media player that syncs with your non-apple mp3 player?
If the answer is the other media company’s policy on DRM then your beef is with them not Apple. Apple has given you everything you need to do it, how you approach the work around is up to you.
If at sometime I do choose to by and mp3 player it will be an iPod becuase its designed to be much more than just an mp3 player. (Firewire Drive, PIM, radio, digital note taker, etc). Compaired to it the rest of the mp3 players functionallity just sucks.
First off Im going to address Real Player. The one reason why I do not like or use Real Player is because of all the extra crap that they bundle with it. You get all these extra icons and crap on your desktop, you get spyware, now they want to bundle the Google toolbar. Well guess what, I do not want the google toolbar. I use the MSN toolbar with IE of I uses the sidebar with Mozilla. If its anything like Real’s past “deals” they wont even ask you if you want the darn thing, it just installs the stuff. I dont like people trying to read my mind.
Second, the iPod. While I can appreciate the iPod for its beauty and its functionality. Apple is going to shoot itself in the foot because most audio files are WMA and MP3, so unless Apple either allows other to license the AAC format and or support WMA in the iPod and iTunes, Apple is done even before it started. Alot of people are getting irritated with Apples attitude and even though Apple is #1 for right now it doesnt take long to become #0.
I agree 100% with Rob Potts. I believe many responses are from people who seem to be suffering from a severe case of haterism. As a pc user Apple’s music setup represents the best of the best (which is rare in technology), and you all should be praising them instead of trying to snuff them out of existence.
If you’d rather use and spread the use of crapware, and kill of good solutions take it upon yourself to do it, and leave us out of it.
“The iPod has more than 50% of the US market, while iTunes Music Store has been selling 130 million songs per year.”
the apple itunes music store has not yet even been open one full year.
in the first 11 months until an announcement by apple last month, they sold only 50 million songs. they said they would hit 100 million songs in one year and they only got half that.
the current weekly average now that windows buyers can use the itms carries out to a 130 million per year average. if all stays the same…and they can get giant corporations to buy tracks and give them away to a DRM wary market.
but again why the fuss and who really cares? who makes money selling music short of a few elite music stars and the labels?
apple sells 50 million songs lets say. how much of that goes right back to the labels and artists, the credit card companies for processing, and goes into apples cost structure to distribute the music? is apple making even 10% or 5 million in profit on that?
as all of the competitors ramp up and establish brand names and followings what will happen to apples share?
also, the ipod, in all research i have seen online, shows it to be 33% of the portable digital music player market in the USA
see for example: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001906705…
the ipod is adding to apples bottom line now that powermac and powerbook sales are faltering and their share of the worldwide personal computer market continues to trend downward. what will happen to apple as the dozens of online and portable player competitors continue to force prices down?
perfect example is pcmagazines article released in yesterdays issue that rates the ipod mini a 4.5 and the creative muvo a 4.
creative gets a solid rating near the vaunted ipod yet it costs $50 or 20% less. The creative muvo2 also has a 15 hour battery life compared to the ipod mini’s 7 hours.
the ipod weighs .2 of an ounce less and nearly all reviewers agree it has a better interface.
Interesting, save $50 to get a player that weighs .2 oz more yet has 2x the battery life and is slightly less handy to use.
who is really going to win?
lets improve our accuracy around here.
This iPod plays MP3, and AAC is and a standard as the audio codec of MPEG 4. However I agree that they should licence Fairplay to let other stores sell music to play on iPods with the DRM that the music cartels require. The iTMS was supposed to be a loss leader to sell iPods so I don’t understand why they won’t do this.
You Sir, are exacly correct. People who buy iPods and use iTMS do so knowing full well what they can and cannot do as a result. I own an iPod and I have purchased music on iTMS a few time. I don’t buy a lot of music anyway, but when I felt that I didn’t need the extra packaging and crap that came with a CD purchase, iTMS worked just fine and I am very happy with the service. I get so tired reading the post from people who a) don’t want an iPod but still feel the need to complain about Apple and how “overpriced” their products are or b) want an iPod but complain because Apple decides to price them higher than what they are willing to pay.
Until the point is reached where nobody is buying a product because it is overpriced, then the manufacturer can charge whatever they want for it. All of these armchair economists out there forget that if I make something, I set the price. If nobody buys, then I can either lower the price or I can go out of buisiness, but I still set the price. None of this matters though since Apple is hardly having much of a problem selling iPods these days.
In the long term, Apple is irrelevant in the music industry unless they change iTunes into something along the lines of MP3.com and start supporting artists directly.
Because MP3.com did so very well.
Except for the eight free songs I got on Pepsi bottles, I buy all my music in the RealPlayer Music Store. Why? Because their AAC files are 50% higher quality than the ones offered by Apple, they will play without conversion on my Palm Zire 71, and the store has a better interface.
Apple may very well open up iTunes Music store in the future, but right now lets look at why Apple made iTMS in the first place: To encourage iPod sales. iTMS is a break even proposition for apple on its own, but as a Driver for ipod sales, it is phenomenal! iPod sales are up 909% over the same period last year. Those are numbers apple cannot ignore, iTMS only makes purchasing iPods that much more of a no Brainer. I’m sure when Apple starts seeing this growth slow down and posting more modest number, they will realize they have Sold iPods to everyone who will buy them as a closed system and now they are the undisputed market leader by volume and by dollars, they will say “lets open it up and try to drive iTMS sales up high enough for us to make a profit.
Think of it like this. iTMS is not a service for joe average that doesn’t own an ipod, but if he likes it and wants to use it, great, no problem. iTMS is something you get with buying an ipod as a bonus. At some point Apple will want to start making money on iTMS. Thats when they open it up. Not before.
I am sort of glad this subject has been brought to OSNews so I can expose my opinion on where apple has gone wrong with the iPod. Here is the gist of it : Apple has decided to push the idea of a digital hub with their computers at the center of it, however this has not increased sales much because apple had to work on their image of being expensive and incompatible (the number of people who still think apple cannot open word documents or surf the net would surprise some of you). But this is not the problem, they (apple) created and unleashed the iPod one of the best players out there, has some flaws but has a great style. It was however one of the first disk-based player, soon after not only could it play your music it could sync with your address book, keep texts etc. now that’s about when I decided to hop on the iPod bandwagon.
Yet for all it’s goodness apple made the iPod one way and made a bad UI design in iTunes and iSync: when you leave the automatic settings syncing an iPod with a mac (never tried on a pc) it will mirror the computer ie if you just erased your whole collection of franc sinatra to make space on that small harddrive of yours, your ipod will loose the songs too. Now many will tell me well then why as a power user let it on automatic ? well somewhere in all the hype i never believed something like that would happen. iTunes never asked or warned me.
Many will justify the previous situation, by stating that this is a way for apple to prevent piracy, and added DRM if you like. But I say this is BS, Apple made great headway with OS X one of the best OSes out there it combines the power of Unix with a great Gui you all know the rest of how that goes … but some of NextSteps core technologies have been overlooked (i think) when apple wanted to make another revolution, because the digital hub should not be computer centric but DATA CENTRIC. and the ipod would have been the means to a power revolution. to make a long story short,combining NextStep security, directory and distributed user technology the ipod could mirror a user’s folder. plugging an iPod in any mac other than the one of the owners would (if the option is enabled by the administrator of the concerned mac like file vault) create a temporary account (with proper restrictions of course,) and let the user use that mac almost as if it were his that feat would have pushed mac sales on the same ramp as iPod sales. This would have made all mac iPod users able to access ubiquity of mac computers : want to try a g5 with some app you coded with your unix shell settings plug your iPod and voila.
Now I do believe this is still possible, but will be done by someone hacking the ipod. and for people afraid that it will circumvent things like the copying mp3 protection , hacks for that have been readily available, and my answer to that is use file vault.
cheers
All Apple is doing today with their music strategy is supporting the rip off practices of the big Hollywood oligarchs.
Witness how Apple is hunting down that poor guy who wrote a program so you get fair use on your already bought iTunes music store music. This is the true Apple, 100% against the customer.
There will be innovation in the music industry, but it will not come from Apple.
Apple’s main concern is how to make the most expensive music player more hyped and more of a fad so they can extract more cash from the well to do and/or foolish over-spenders.
It won’t be long before there are many many better (and far cheaper) hardware choices than the expensive iPod. And when it comes to music, most people are not buying from the iDRM store.
Overall, Apple is as usual at the luxury high-end of the market, hyping their expensive stuff like it is “must have” for everyone. Unfortunately, Apple is a vociferous cult, so it is not so easy to press stop on their endless cult propaganda. I wish there was a way to turn off Apple for good.
I’ll be glad when Real Audio/Video is gone.
Their software more or less bites… It’s usable, but whenever I have the chance, I opt for some other media player (including <gasp> the MS Media Player!).
On their website, Real’s notorious for hiding the link to the free version of their player, all the while teasing people into scrounging around their site looking for it. It’s ridiculous. If you’re going to advertise a free piece of software to get you to their site, they should at least make it easily available. It’s obvious that they’re trying to trick people into eventually giving up and buying the full version.
Their player’s better these days, but is still a real dog compared to the likes of VLC, and other 3rd party media players. As mentioned, I choose Windows Media player over the Real player when possible, if that gives you any idea how much I dislike it.
And, with the freely available drivers which let you play Real media files under any Windows media player, I see no reason for Real to exist as they do any longer. It’s a proprietary, inferior format in many ways (IMHO).
I sincerely hope that they either revamp their player, and their sales ethics, or just disappear from the marketplace all together. As for the streaming media sites which use them, I wish they’d switch over to streaming mp3’s. Much cooler in my book then Real’s format.
/endrant
8)=
Let’s ignore the few posts ranting about the evil ways of Apple. Those are the kind of people that reason just can’t reach.
So instead I’ll talk about the original article and why I think it’s wrong.
First, the analogy to Apple losing desktop marketshare by remaining closed is a poor one. Remaining closed was simply a side-effect of their overall strategy to be a premium hardware and software brand. Licensing their OS would have meant a re-shift in strategy to becoming solely a software company. That’s not the direction they chose to take. Then there is the issue of corporate America just not being interested in using a toy for real work (a premium one, read: overpriced, at that).
And the analogy is poor because iPods are a totally consumer -market product. There is no portable music player business market. The forces are different. And the force from within the market, music, is vastly different in character than that of the software market.
Second, the call to Apple to open their iPod really hasn’t provided sufficient reason behind it. There have been emotional calls or attacks against DRM. But, other than a fear of repeating supposed mistakes of the past, there have been no solid business reasons presented that affect the market now. When the market for possible future products begins to take off (ie. cell phones with ample storage for music) Apple would be well advised to license Fairplay. But none of those markets exist now. And there is no reason to license now over a simple fear that things will change faster than Apple can react.
First off….Glaser is a real tool. Funny to hear him say how bad ITMS and iPod are for people and that they are turned off by it. This despite the fact that ITMS and ipod are doing incredibly well and lead their respective markets with authority.
For the others that love to proclaim Apples ultra locked down proprietary system will fail, lets get a few things straight. First, the ipod will play any ITMS song with DRM, any AAC file without DRM, as well as any MP3 file. Someone explain to me again how this is proprietary Apple only etc. Next is ITMS…..I really dont see what the big deal is. I use it all the time and the DRM doesnt bother me. If I want to get rid of the DRM I can simply burn the songs to CD. I usually do this anyway so I have a copy for the cars. From there I am free to take my DRM free CD and covert to DRM free AAC or MP3 at my leisure. Even WMA if thats your thing. I can do all of this converting, spare the wma, right in iTunes. So, once again, somebody please explain how this is so horrendous and proprietary and OMG Apple will go down in a flaming wreck.
Heres the deal ppl. Apple did it right. Their success proves it. Others will come into the market and drive competition, but Apple isn’t going anywhere. I fully believe they will continue to hold a considerable lead. Even over the scary MS. I’ve seen prototypes of MS’s new portable media player and I think its a joke. One of the neat things about ipod is its small size with big storage and great interface. Even smaller for the mini. The MS device looks like a freaking smaller version of a tablet PC. Call it my opinion, but I think ppl need/want their music to be portable…..not their pr0n collection and photo albums.
“Witness how Apple is hunting down that poor guy who wrote a program so you get fair use on your already bought iTunes music store music. This is the true Apple, 100% against the customer.”
I have to comment on this first. They shut down an application that stripped DRM of bought songs. If they allow people to do that so easily the record would pull out and all this would be over. You seem to forget that they have one of the most loose DRM policies out there (which isn’t hard to crack in the first place, and they even put a tech document on their site about how to do it). Apple isn’t against the customer, but they have to protect what they have to keep going.
Akhar, the data centric idea exactly what’s going on. In fact, you idea of syncing your home folder was supposed to be part of Panther. It was called Home On The iPod, or Home On The Go, depending on where you looked. You could sync your home folder on your iPod, and log-in with your iPod on another computer, keeping all your documents and setting and everything. They pulled it about a month before the Panther release, and no one ever found out why. Look for it in the near future though.
“First, the analogy to Apple losing desktop marketshare by remaining closed is a poor one. Remaining closed was simply a side-effect of their overall strategy to be a premium hardware and software brand. Licensing their OS would have meant a re-shift in strategy to becoming solely a software company. That’s not the direction they chose to take. Then there is the issue of corporate America just not being interested in using a toy for real work (a premium one, read: overpriced, at that).”
You may want to look into Apple’s fall. That wasn’t even close to the reason.
Now for the situation at hand. Apple didn’t open up to Real because Real has nothing to offer. Making a deal between companies means that both companies bring something to the table. Real didn’t have anything. Apple isn’t lisencing FairPlay because it isn’t theirs to lisence. They are lisencing it from VeriSign. Apple isn’t stopping anyone else from using it. The will not open the iPod up to use Helix because Helix is meant to keep DRM on portable players. The iPod is set up to not care about FairPlay. FairPlay limits the number of computers you can play a song on, but not the number of iPods. Using Helix would just complicate things, and that is what they are going against. They won’t open up and use WMA, even though it’s built into the chip on the iPod, because it would help dislodge iTMS’s current position. iTMS just got out of being a loss leader, and is now making some profit. It’s way ahead of competitors, and if they manage to keep it that way, it will make a lot of money one day. There’s no point in risking that until it’s a given that it won’t make money later. It’s simply not an issue yet. iTMS started as a way to sell iPods, and it’s doing that wonderfully. Complicating things isn’t going to help. As for outside threats (other stores), MS isn’t much of a problem. If they don’t have a monopoly on a market, they don’t get very far. They have had very little success outside of WIndows and Office, and their own music store won’t have a different selection the iTMS, and couldn’t be more than 10 cents cheaper because the record companies have a lot of input on price (yes price, not just royalties). MS would also have to make it very easy to use. Right now Apple has an exclusive lisence from Amazon for One-Click Buying. You can’t get easier than that. The MS media player really looks like a flop because it’s overdone. Features are great, but you can’t lose focus. iPods sell so well because they are focused on simply playing music. MS has a habit of doing that, look at Smart Watches and Tablet PCs. As for the price of the iPod, simple supply and demand says that it should cost more. Whether you can afford it or not, they are selling them faster than the suppliers can make parts for them. Why lower the cost until sales drop? And a 909% increase isn’t exactly a drop.
Apple is sharing, with other hardware vendors. They’ve licensed the iPod and iTMS to HP. You’ll soon see HP-branded iPods coming your way.
It’s also quite possible that Apple would be amenable to opening the iPod to other services – just not Real. Real has gone way down hill and their software sucks and their music store uses a subscription model – something Steve Jobs stated was unacceptable. Why would Apple want to hitch themselves to Real? Since iTMS exists solely to drive iPod sales, Apple would have to make sure the contract clearly states that Real cannot make a competing player. Since there’s little revenue from the iTMS, I don’t see how only offering music will help Real.
I’m waiting to see what happens when M$ enters the online music fray. Napster, Wal-Mart, et. al. will be competing with the very entity they rely upon for their file format and media playback. Since they rely mostly on music sales, are any of these other services profitable?
playing dirty: Me, I’m happy buying music at sites like http://www.magnatune.com and downloading at full quality, it works, today, with an ipod.
Magnatune is an independent record label that (somehow) sharewares MP3s of its recording artists. This is not a competitor to iTMS nor is it in the same market – never was, probably never will be. The problem is that if you want to buy music from the large (and according to Magnatune, evil) recording labels, the choices are commercial music stores like iTMS and Napster.
playing dirty: The iPod does not limit your music use (unless you use Ogg), so don’t bother trying to drag it into the argument.
Never said it limits the amount of music you get to listen, just said that it limits where you buy that music online.
playing dirty: I don’t particularly agree with Apple limiting ‘Fairplay’ to the ipod, but then when others are playing dirty you have to play dirty sometimes to stay in the game.
Heh, opposite. I don’t consider Fairplay as dirty, but it would push Apple out of the game. I explained it in my editorial – Apple can’t maintain its market position while serving an end-to-end solution.
playing dirty: Real and Microsoft will not just roll over and let Apple have this market, they will use every trick they can to take it from them, and Apple doesn’t want to end up as one of the minor players, with a format that not enough people use – *that’s* why they’re pushing AAC so hard.
If they want AAC to really succeed, they should open Fairplay DRM to competitors, and prevent Microsoft and Real relegating them to a meaningless niche player.
Rob Potts: Most of the functionality you mentioned are not only available on some of Apple’s competitors, they often provide more features like on-the-fly music encoding, FM tuner, etc.
As for the DRM, i didn’t argue against it. I just argued that Apple should expand it to include more vendors so that it would maintain and perhaps increase their market dominance.
bendertheoffender: MP3.com fell mainly due to ligitation, not by the fact that they don’t have a good business model.
Jason Stiles: Apple may very well open up iTunes Music store in the future, but right now lets look at why Apple made iTMS in the first place: To encourage iPod sales.
If there are other music stores selling Fairplay/AAC music that can be played on iPod – how would that discourage iPod sales?
hocico: Witness how Apple is hunting down that poor guy who wrote a program so you get fair use on your already bought iTunes music store music. This is the true Apple, 100% against the customer.
If the customer can’t stand the EULA of the music bought from iTMS, they shouldn’t buy music from there. Meanwhile, Apple have no choice but to “hunt” down the people who made PlayFair (mostly by sending cease and desist letters to companies hosting it). Don’t agree with the EULA? Don’t buy the music – you aren’t forced to. Don’t like the RIAA and their cartel-like anti-artiste behaviour? You don’t have to buy their music; boycott them.
Mr. Banned: It’s a proprietary, inferior format in many ways (IMHO).
Uhm, they are pushing MPEG-4 and AAC – not anymore proprietary as Apple’s rendition of it, or Microsoft’s WMA/WMV.
And the analogy is poor because iPods are a totally consumer -market product. There is no portable music player business market. The forces are different. And the force from within the market, music, is vastly different in character than that of the software market.
There are many different segments in the music business, and as time passes by, you would see how this affects Apple. For example – audiophiles: They probably wouldn’t be interested in the same product for mass consumerism. And then there are people who want jack-of-all-trades devices – Apple can’t provide for this.
When the market for possible future products begins to take off (ie. cell phones with ample storage for music) Apple would be well advised to license Fairplay. But none of those markets exist now.
They would exist one day. Waiting for them to exist before taking any action is rather on the risky side; Microsoft is already pushing their formats in this, and many other, markets. If Apple waits for cellphone/music player combos reach critical mass, it may well be too late for them to do anything.
robco: Apple is sharing, with other hardware vendors. They’ve licensed the iPod and iTMS to HP. You’ll soon see HP-branded iPods coming your way.
HP’s iPod is a rebadged iPod with little difference with Apple’s iPod and made chiefly for HP customers. The user interface is iPod, the hardware is largely iPod – the only thing is that the logos are HP’s. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
entering the online music scene?
what is windows media player and its DRM technology?
who makes it?
how many online stores use it?
how many third party hardware and software players utilitize it?
who gets paid when it is used?
who makes oses that run portable devices with mobile windows media player that plays those DRM tunes?
who gets paid when that os is licensed?
does ms have to make a hardware device or run their own store before they are considered to be in the market?
in the end they would be smarter to leave hardware manufacturing to third parties.
likewise they will only enter the actual online store market to add some value elsewhere (msn benefit, ad revenue, etc.) as it will remain very hard to make a profit selling music online…or maybe i should say a profit to write home to Mom about.
apple struggles to make any profit so every little bit helps. ms makes more profit in a quarter than apple makes in several years of running an ever more risky operation.
if apple sold 10 billion songs per year and got to keep all the revenue and there were no costs involved they would equal what ms makes per year.
apple has a lot of ipods and itunes songs to sell.
ms is playing it smart doing the r & d and licensing the technology to others.
Funny Glaser, just a week ago he was buddy-buddy with Apple trying to worm his way into the the success of the iPod and now he refers to as a cold-war soviet made mp3 player. What a bone-head! I will be glad when Real Player is gone for good……poor looser!
You may want to look into Apple’s fall. That wasn’t even close to the reason.
Are you going to post an actual argument or just make an assertion that I am wrong?
Since you claim to know the real reason, please enlighten us with your wisdom, oh great one.
Apple isn’t lisencing FairPlay because it isn’t theirs to lisence. They are lisencing it from VeriSign. Apple isn’t stopping anyone else from using it.
Do you know that for a fact or are you making it up? Can you point me to anything on the net that indicates that Fairplay was licensed and not purchased? Can you point me to the contract with VeriSign that says that Apple is not allowed to sublicense Fairplay? Can you show me where in the contract it says that VeriSign is allowed to license it to parties other than Apple?
They would exist one day. Waiting for them to exist before taking any action is rather on the risky side; Microsoft is already pushing their formats in this, and many other, markets. If Apple waits for cellphone/music player combos reach critical mass, it may well be too late for them to do anything.
Apple was not the first out the gate with an MP3 player. You don’t have to be first. You have to be both:
1) early enough
2) best
Apple was not the first out the gate with an MP3 player. You don’t have to be first. You have to be both:
1) early enough
2) best
I personally don’t see iPod as early enough or best – just a good solution well marketed with a strong brand identity behind it and a even stronger advertising campaign promoting it (oh, and the fact that Apple is associated with high-end glamour helps especially when iPod then and now looks better than their competitors).
But remember, when Apple first came out with Apple, their strongest competitor is perhaps Creative or Rio or the likes – not Microsoft. Microsoft has an history of using their competitors mistakes against them, and a good track record of entering new markets and holding sway in it (i.e. PDA market, Internet portals, etc.)
And if Apple open up their market, they definately won’t be first; Microsoft would have beaten them. Apple however still have an advantage of holding a significant porportion of the market.
I bought an iPod for a number of reasons having little to do with price. I needed a player that was easy to use and woould hold a lot of music. I was tired of having to take the time to change the music every night only to disciver the next day I was in a mood for something different than what I had on my player. None of the other players came close to meeting my requirements at the time I bought it. And I normally use my iPod about three hours a day at my job.
As for the iTunes store, I really don’t understand all the complaining about it. I have never used it because I get my music from other places, one of which has already been mentioned here, http://www.magnatune.com becuase I like the concept behind it. 50% of the purchase price goes to the musician. I DL the album as a FLAC file, unpack it and then import it into iTunes. Works like a charm and it is CD quality music.
As for codecs and DRM, we all have our favorites. I have no quarrel with the DRM policies of iTunes. It lets me burn my music to CD if I want and I have even used some of the tracks when making slideshows of my pictures on DVD.
In the end I guess it boils down to personal taste. You normally do get what you pay for. I needed an easy to use rock solid player that I could count on and I found that in the iPod. Did I pay more for it? Yes. Would I buy it again today? Again, yes. It was worth the premium price for me. Do I have money to throw away? No. But you occasionally have to spend the extra money to get what will work best for you.
Bill
Superior? In your dreams. Cheaper, yes. But then MS has proved time and again that free will almost always win out over superior technology. While I have not used everything MS has put out, I have used a wide range of their products and I have never once used one where their bundled application came even close to matching the application they were trying to push out of the market.
The day MS does achieve the lions share of the online music business will be a sad day indeed for the user. It will be one more area where the choices for the end user will be reduced to what Uncle Bill decides is best for us.
Bill
1. Is the market mature for music stores and players?
No. Players are more mature, but Apple leading with less than a million a quarter is not a mature market.
Music stores are even less so…
It is too soon to be concerned about losing any position, when the market is still rapidly expanding primarily to your (Apple’s) own efforts and actions
2. What control is lost, how does the vision change if you license the DRM?
Apple is dedicated to singles as well as albums… downloads versus subscriptions… fair rights, the same across the board for all songs and artists… Is there a single other store that shares this exact vision? No. So, if they had access to the DRM, would they implement rights the same and preserve Apple’s vision? Who knows
3. What are the actual abilities of FairPlay?
Fairplay allows unlimited use on any iPods, 3 Macs/PCs, etc… Would opening Fairplay to other devices be able to distinguish the type of player and the number of players that the files were stored on?
4. Is Apple tied to their strategy and to Fairplay?
Unlikely. As I stated above, the market is immature. If we come to the day when everyone or say 75% of people have digital audio players, will Apple remain closed? Who knows… it’s way too early.
Is Apple married to Fairplay and it’s current abilities? No likely… MPEGLA is adding a DRM standard to MPEG-4. And certainly Fairplay is limited in its abilities. Apple will need to expand Fairplay’s abilities or adopt other DRM techniques down the line. Is it worth it for Apple to license and grow Fairplay usage by large numbers if they are going to change in the next 2-3 years? No.
5. Many more points, but that’s a start…
Are we talking about licensing Fairplay to stores or to device manufacturers?
Device manufacturers I can agree with, but think there is plenty of time to do… As I said above, the market is still immature and Apple is still kicking everyone else’s butts.
But stores I cannot understand. The whole concept of music stores is to some day create the “celestial jukebox” where all songs are stored and available. People who argue that I can’t shop at multiple stores ignore that. Why would I want to shop at 4 different stores with 4 different rights policies with 4 different selections and 4 different visions. What I want is for the iTMS to be the largest, most inclusive offering. (Which it is close too). Apple probably has the most exclusive content, few others have made inroads in exclusive artist content.
So the player… Yes, but at this point, it would erode iPod sales with not a great enough benefit to the iTMS.
In this logic, where does Real fit in? Real cannot help Apple by having a retread store. Real wants this because device manufacturers are not supporting their own proprietary DRM… So they will abandon their proprietary DRM to support Apple’s just to get access to iPod support. So… we’re supposed to believe the iPod is so closed and unsuccessful that Real is willing to switch strategies and abandon their own format just to get access to a closed, proprietary, and isolated device? Real’s strategy/offer does nothing to open device support and additional store support doesn’t really add anything… So Real’s proposal and their influence on this debate is meaningless.
We can’t simply consider what Apple should do in an ideal world. We have to consider the business strategies and offerings of potential partners/customers.
“Are you going to post an actual argument or just make an assertion that I am wrong?
Since you claim to know the real reason, please enlighten us with your wisdom, oh great one.”
Actually, no I won’t go any further into it here. It’s off topic. If you want to discuss it I would be happy to in the OS Wars forum.
“Do you know that for a fact or are you making it up? Can you point me to anything on the net that indicates that Fairplay was licensed and not purchased? Can you point me to the contract with VeriSign that says that Apple is not allowed to sublicense Fairplay? Can you show me where in the contract it says that VeriSign is allowed to license it to parties other than Apple?”
I remember what they said when they introduced iTMS. Go watch the stream here…
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/whatson/appleevents/
Whether it’s an exclusive license or not I don’t know. Either way, it’s not their technology to license.
The big change in the industry isn’t about how the music is distributed, it’s about what’s distributed. Selling music by the song means record companies can’t decide what’s popular.
First, regarding the note that ‘majority of the files are WMA and MP3’. yes, but both formats are yesteryear formats. With WMA as completely proprietory. AAC which is a part of MP4 is greatly improved upon MP3 and everyone can license it. A number of free or shareware encoders and decoders are available. The latest version of Nero provides the AAC encoder which is compatible with iTunes.
Second, ‘why Apple won’t license AAC’? Well, because AAC does NOT belong to Apple, to start with. second, as I’ve mentioned, everyone can license AAC. Seems like you don’t really know what you’re talking about.
Interesting read:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1890246…
I personally don’t see iPod as early enough or best – just a good solution well marketed with a strong brand identity behind it and a even stronger advertising campaign promoting it (oh, and the fact that Apple is associated with high-end glamour helps especially when iPod then and now looks better than their competitors).
Well apparently most people disagree. what makes a good MP3 player os first and for most how easy it is to use. The ipod’s interface is well reknowned for it’s natural ease of use. So much so that people are ripping it off.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,62542,00.html
My colleague just got the Dell juke box and his advise to me ” get the ipod, this thing is clucky to use”.
P.S: I don’t own an ipod.
On the article, the reason Apple doesn’t have a EU ITMS yet is that it is extremely hard to get licensing deals in Europe.
Napster’s music licensing frustration
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/20/napster_delays/
Apple iTunes Europe debut ‘may be delayed’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/19/apple_itunes_euro/
ITunes will have a solid base of users for a long time.
Real Networks could still do well.; However, how many people want to use music services that (re)sell some of the same content and promote vendor lock-in?
—–
Google has (or had after this announcement) a creed of “Do no Evil.”
I don’t want Real Networks *mess* on my machine, that and AOL (Compuserve too) were the first to give up the ghost.
At most I can still vote “NO!” by not upgrading the Google toolbar, although some of you will find your daily computing greatly eased.
2004. Years after the combination of personal computing power, cheaply available digital compression techniques, freely accessible file sharing methods, and increased bandwidth to small businesses and homes, changed the face of digital music distribution…
iTunes Music Store. Napster][. eMusic. And more. All independent – to varying degrees – of the “Big 5”. But you’ll recall that the “Big 5” wanted to do it themselves originally. You won’t recall them giving up this idea in lieu of the independent, or semi-independent, proprietors above.
Which one was first, which one is on top at the end of this year – or the next, which ones use which encoding and DRM standards, which ones work with which devices… it’s all beside the point. Eventually, they are all destined to be bought up, merge, go out of business, or be reduced to minor players.
The “Big 5” own essentially all the content being sold on these services, and will do so for the foreseeable future. They’re not at all shy at competing with their customers (a situation that Apple can sympathise with themselves).
The “Big 5” I am sure can agree on a uniform encoding and DRM standard, as I am sure they can agree on a single distribution methodology, personal rights standards, and storage paradigm. From there, hardware from any manufacturer will get to ‘plug-in’ provided they meet the price of entry. It’s only a small leap to see that what each “Big 5” organisation – and their subsidiaries – end up offering is really all the same thing, just re-branded. Every industry ends up like that.
And all of this is – my opinion – a lot closer that anyone thinks.
So considering this, which current music store vendor is in the best position to adopt to this “new world order” of music distribution with their current portable hardware offering? Whose customers – who currently enjoy “gold standard personal use rights” – will be among those few groups of customers that will continue to enjoy their purchases long into the future? Which vendor can absolutely count on getting a look-in when this comes around?
We all know who.
The “Big 5” are asking themselves even now: “Why render unto the IT Industry what can be kept for ourselves?”. Any argument about them not using their content the way they want to is in immediate peril because it acknowledges it is, in fact, _their_ content, to do with as _they_ wish. Not a pleasant fact of life, but a fact of life nonetheless.
I’m in a country where there is as yet no music store – in part because they were used to try and leverage in U.S.-style laws to more or less ‘criminalise’ copyright infringement. Whether they will succeed or not is an open question at this point. But it doesn’t matter to me. I doubt I’ll be buying in much, if at all.
Because I download my music direct from the authors, where they have made it available for all. I’m more than happy to pay them for their trouble; all they need to do is ask. There’s some great music out there, and you can get it – high quality, no DRM, and perfectly legal. Think outside the box; you might just be surprised.
Anonymous: The fact that iPod is by far the most popular and widely used MP3 player shows that the market is still a niche and haven’t matured into a major consumer electonics product. One they do they, one size for surely wouldn’t fit all, and Apple would notice their market share would slowly start eroding (and that would happen faster if there wasn’t any vendor lock-in).
Apple does have a choice – make their standard of Fairplay/AAC open and multi-vendor and maintain its dominance and long-term revenue stream at the cost of loosing their traditional business model, or having iPod/iTunes being relegated to being a niche player with little sway in the entire market.
PantherPPC: Let’s just say VeriSign does own FairPlay and controls its licensing – what do they have to loose by licensing it to Apple competitors? Absolutely nothing. The reason why they don’t license out FairPlay, if they do own FairPlay and have a monopoly on its rights, is that Apple are preventing them from doing so (most likely by contract).
If Apple says, “Okay, make this DRM-standard multi-vendor”, I’m quite sure VeriSign would be all too happy to oblige.
Raptor: Some European stores have managed to sell music from European labels – offering that with media from US’s RIAA recording companies is actually quite tough. BTW, my point was that iTMS can’t serve every niche and every geographical region. I’m quite sure that by the end of next year, Europe and Japan would have a version of iTMS.
But can Apple rush out solutions for other not-so-lucrative geographical regions, like India and Latin America? For American companies, potential profits are too little to warrant such a service there; but for local companies things may be different.
daeH_taeM: Real Networks could still do well.; However, how many people want to use music services that (re)sell some of the same content and promote vendor lock-in?
Tell me, how does Apple iTunes/iPod solution does not promote vendor lock-in?
All you guys need to get a life & desperately find a woman!
1) That’s my point (groan) all of these services do lock you in. You spend money on music files that are in most cases (see number 5) degraded by lossy compression (even if playblack sounds good) & requires a two-hundred forty-nine dollar (approximate starting price for and iPod) player.
That too much investment for that hassle of losing data files having to replace them or beg and hope that xxx services will let you (at no charge) re-download.
2) CD players, CDs (for collecting most of a certain band’s or a person’s catalog of recorded works – the Big Five will always make people hunt for the nice extra “goodies”) and power cells are still much easier. :>
3) Fact: to bypass DRM, Burning, ripping and re-compressing lossy encoded audio tracks still sucks – a waste of time.
4) You are right that Apple should be more flexible with the DRM – they need assistance & time to turn a profit. And use thicker wiring – more solder for the various connectors in the Ipod. :]
5) One service I’ve heard about in passing sells (?) lossless compressed music using FLAC/Monkey Audio, etc. Googleize: “Open Source Music” – I think that’s it. Better to spend hours downloading and get a better return for the used computer cycles. Some other pay for play vendors might also be using lossless compression, if you find another one it’s a good thing to hear. :}
6) Windows Media Audio only sounds good if the person has read the fine manual on how to use the encoding software or default best quality settings.
7) Some of these statements are opinion. :p