Steve Jobs on the Music Industry
Published December 10, 2003
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine Steve Jobs goes on the record about his dealings with the music industry and some of his opinions on the future. Very interesting indeed. (Questions in bold type)
This is not the entire interview but selected questions and answers.
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How did the record companies react when you approached them about getting onboard with Apple?
There are a lot of smart people at the music companies. The problem is they're not technology people. The good music companies do an amazing thing. They have people who can pick the person who's gonna be successful out of 5,000 candidates. It's an intuitive process. And the best music companies know how to do that with a reasonably high success rate.
I think that's a good thing. The world needs more smart editorial these days. The problem is that that has nothing to do with technology. When the Internet came along and Napster came along, people in the music business didn't know what to make of the changes. A lot of these folks didn't use computers, weren't on e-mail — didn't really know what Napster was for a few years. They were pretty doggone slow to react. Matter of fact, they still haven't really reacted. So they're vulnerable to people telling them technical solutions will work — when they won't.
Because of their technological ignorance.
Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first went to talk to these record companies — about eighteen months ago — we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."
Of course, music theft is nothing new. There have been bootlegs for years.
Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property, called the Internet — and no one's gonna shut down the Internet.
And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. The way we expressed it to them was: You only have to pick one lock to open every door.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. Next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions. And we were right. We told them the music subscription services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads.
Craig Lyndall rants, raves and writes other stuff at FilteringCraig.com and at The Cleveland Sports Curse
- Steve Jobs on the Music Industry
- Published: December 10, 2003
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Culture: Media, Sci/Tech: Software, Music: News
- Writer: Craig Lyndall
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Comments on this articleComments
I was amazed when I downloaded ITunes at what a great library manager it is as well. It is far and away the best way to manage different playlists and also to create mix cd's from all my MP3's. I didn't know that the experience could be that good, but it is.
What's with Jobs flat-out lying about the customes the other services have, though? He claims 50,000 forall the otherservices combined - there are hundreds of thousands.
Also, he dismsses the subscription model, which I think will end up being what the masses latch onto.
The only thing I can think of for you first question is that the interview was done a little while ago, or he is lying.
Also, I don't know about the subscription model either. I think there are a whole lot of people who want to get their stuff a download at a time. Plus that is also what makes the profits easy to trace and filter back to the appropriate parties. I guess with the subscription model you could do statistics to make sure people were paid properly, but it seems simpler with the individual download to me.
i hate the subscription model with a passion. The only truly helpful and best value subscription model is the one used by magazines.
I don't want to be locked into something if i decide several months before my subscription ends that i don;t want to use it anymore. Or if i forget about it for a long period of time, or simply cannot make us of it (e.g. if my pc breaks and doesn't get fixed for a few weeks)
The point about never being able to fully protect digital content is part of a larger, more general truism - it's impossible to develop a fully secure copy protection system for digital content of any kind, because there will always be people determined to break copy protection and invariably, because none of it is perfect, cracks are found
Yes, but with 60 million people now used to getting what they want, when they want it for free, the closer a pay system is to that, the better they will do, I think.
i've gotta agree with eric here.
kids are used to downloading stuff for free....and having to pay per download will not add to the experience. it seems like it'd be much more convenient to pay once and then forget it.
this coming from a guy who has no interest in downloading aside from the occasional "what that person sound like" kind of thing (and a subscription model would support that...at least for me).
I think the key is to make it "feel like free"
yea, that's right.
i used to use napster to do just the kind of sampling i spoke of (more often than not leading to a cd purchase).
i don't use kazaa at all because it's a pain in the ass (at least to me).
if there was a service that had a reasonable subscription fee (and was easy to use), then i'd probably sign up.
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I agree with a lot of what was said in that article. I used to use KAAZA and Napster because I wanted the CHOICE. If I only wanted one song, I wanted ONE song. Now with iTunes I get everything I want. I pay for it, and am glad to pay for a service I want.
Artists like the Beatles who refuse to allow their stuff on iTunes are stuck in the past and don't get it.