Diabetics beware: Devin Leonard's feature on the new Apple iTunes Music Store is so larded with sugar and honey it might induce seizures:
- The real buzz in the music trade is that Steve has just created what is easily the most promising legal digital music service on the market. "I think it's going to be amazing," says Roger Ames, CEO of the Warner Music Group. Jobs, not surprisingly, is even more effusive. He claims his digital store will forever change not only how music is sold and distributed but also the way artists release and market songs and how they are bought and used by fans.
One thing's for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it's the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA. Unlike Napster, KaZaA and its brethren have no central servers, making them tougher for the industry to shut down. The majors have tried to come up with legal alternatives. But none of those ventures have taken off because they are too pricey and user-hostile.
The iTunes Music Store, by contrast, is as simple and straightforward as anything Jobs has ever produced. Apple users get to the store by clicking a button on the iTunes 4 jukebox, available for download when the service made its debut on April 28. You can listen to a 30-second preview of any song and then, with one click, buy a high-quality audio copy for 99 cents. There's no monthly subscription fee, and consumers have virtually unfettered ownership of the music they download. Jobs is rolling out the iTunes store with previously unreleased material by artists including Bob Dylan, U2, Missy Elliott, and Sheryl Crow. There will be music from bands like the Eagles, who have never before allowed their songs to be sold by a legal digital music service. And Jobs is personally lobbying other big-name holdouts, like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, to come aboard.
Article comments
1 - Tim Jarrett
So the alternative is for him to take it cross platform, then people have no incentive to move to Windows?
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Apple isn't in the services business or even in the software business. They're in business to sell boxen. If you don't believe me look at their cash flow statement. If this adds a reason for people to switch to Macs, so much the better for Steve.
And priced too high according to whom? I'd love to see some data from someone on this topic, but until then, it's all up to the market.
2 - Tim Jarrett
Urgh, that should have been "no incentive to move to Mac." Please pardon my brainfreeze...
3 - Eric Olsen
Tim, there is no question that giving buyers an incentive to switch to Apple computers is part of this deal, but all this gibberish about a revolutionary new service is just that if only a tiny percentage of the population can use it.
Re price, I am basing it on relative value compared to a CD: for 20 songs, the current Apple price would be about $20 - way too high, higher than a CD, which has additonal features like cover art, liner notes, track information, high sound quality, etc. $.50 per track would be $10, less than some new CDs but not much, still too high, $.25 would be $5 for the album, clearly a good deal and a good value.
4 - Madison
the first thing that will jump out at anyone is the price. 99 cents is indeed too high.
5 - Jim Carruthers
I was curious to check this out, so I downloaded the update to Quicktime and iTunes (my bandwidth is *ahem* saturated this afternoon to the depth of six feet under).
A while later I get the boot to the prunes I was somewhat expecting. It's only available in the USA.
Unlike most collaborative efforts it is really easy to see what comes from Apple, and what comes from the the RIAA 5. The clever, carefully designed parts: Apple. The stupid, greedy parts: the majors.
Price and territory, straight out of the biz model of sheet music, 45s and LPs.
And that $1, there's no returns, no packaging, no inventory, and no retailer discounting (and I imagine the baaassssttttards found a loophole to pocket the mandatory mechanical fee too).
Short sighted greed. And I will guess the first artist lawsuit charging theft of royalties will be within 90 days.
As for "no subscription fees", that is the future. Would you buy a Tivo and cable package if you had to pay $5 per 90 minute programming block? I didn't think so.
6 - Michael Croft
Eric,
Many albums can be purchased for a smaller amount than the per-song rate. The Wall, for instance, is listed as (about $25), which is less than the SRP of (about) $37 and competitive with Amazon.com.
I'm just thrilled to have an all AAC solution from download to library/player to portable player, with a zeroconf solution that lets me play songs my wife has ripped/bought on her mac.
Revolutionary it isn't. But I'm willing to say it's going to give me more power and control with the tools I had.
Now if it let me buy independent music, then it might spark a revolution. Hmm. Time to email Uncle Steve...
7 - Jim Carruthers
While I think about it, the reason the service isn't available for Windoze, don't blame Apple, blame Micro$oft. M$ is pushing their own closed DRM system via Windows Media and that doesn't include AAC. So even if the Steve wanted to include Windows users, BillG won't let him.
8 - Brian Flemming
Eric,
As far as I know, the Windows service will be available "by the end of the year," not "next year."
One way to look at it is that we Apple users are the guinea pigs. I don't doubt that it is more complicated for Apple to create a service that works with Windows than one that works with Mac-only. iTunes isn't even available for Windows yet, and the service works within iTunes. Another way to look at it is that Jobs came up with this, so if he wants to give us Mac users a bonus for being Mac users, we've got that coming (plenty of Windows software and games have delays coming to Mac OS, if they ever do).
I've checked it out, and I'm impressed. Except for the price. I haven't bought a single song. Why would I? I already have 7300 songs in iTunes. They cost me significantly less than $7300.
If, on the other hand, as you wisely propose, the cost were only 25 cents, I might have purchased a lot of songs by now.
I don't think the Big 5 yet realize that they can slash prices like this and still make money--people will download 4 times as much, so the companies will have the same revenue, but without the costs of physical disks and packaging and shipping, etc. I would have probably spent $20 or more at the Apple Music Store by now if the prices were that cheap. As it is, I'll probably never use it, except maybe to browse for what music I might want to get by different means.
9 - Phillip Winn
On Cross-Platform availability: The reasons for this are myriad, and not solely the result of a desire to drive people to switch to Macs just to buy music. They include simple technical reasons (such as the development effort required to either (1) Write an entire iTunes for Windows or (2) wait for Musicmatch to update their Jukebox for Windows software to access the online music store or (3) develop a new seperate piece of software that does nothing but access the online music store) as well as political considerations.
On price: Little noted in the press is that while each song is $.99 (though I note that they can be priced differently and put on sale and so on, even though none seem to be right now), the per-album price tends to run at $9.99. For a ten-song album, you're paying nine cents extra, but for a twelve-song album, you're saving money.
Of course, as I mentioned in an earlier post, and as Greg Beato harangued me about in the early days of Blogcritics, $.99 is too much for some people. So is $.50, $.25, $.10 and $.01. I guarantee you that if they offered tracks for a penny, people would complain that the proper price should be two-for-a-penny. The truth is that this service answers (or will answer) every major practical objection I've ever heard, though not every philosophical one. Just sampling before you buy? 30 second samples are available of each and every tune. Need portability? You can burn your own CDs and re-rip them if you want. Hate paying $12-18 for an album with two good songs on it? The albums are only $10, and you can buy just the two songs you want for only $2. And so on.
With all of the practical objections gone, it falls back on the philosophical ones: Information wants to be free, the artists deserve more of the gross revenue, no song should cost more than a quarter, and so on.
I should back up and list my major objection to the service - half the stuff I searched for wasn't there. I have eclectic musical tastes, but I would have hoped for better from Apple. I'll check back in a few months.
10 - Phillip Winn
Er, one more thing. It has been noted that the price of a track is actually stored in tenths-of-a-cent, so at least they're thinking ahead technically, even if the contracts never let them go that low.
I'll be happier when they branch out past the big X and sign up the indies. I'm reasonably certain that the indies will show more flexibility on pricing than the bigs. At least I hope so.
11 - Eric Olsen
Since I am allergic to Apples, I am very happy to get all of this hands-on practical information, and I am glad to hear actual users find things to like about it, but the price and the poor catalogue still keep me unexcited. I am certainly not considering becoming unallergic to Apples.
12 - Brian Flemming
Re: Selection. Well, you gotta start somewhere. As Fortune (I think) pointed out, once the record companies realize they can license their music to the Apple Store or have it only available on free file-sharing networks, they will have an easy choice to make. A royalty of 65 cents a download versus nothing.
I hope the 99 cents pricing ends up just being a marketing tool to get people in the door. I would far prefer flexible pricing. Eric should be able to put Elliptical up there with whatever price he wants.
And some of the pricing is ridiculous. To get the 44-second track Un Autre Introduction from DJ Shadow's The Private Press, you pay 99 cents, the same price you pay for the 6:30 track Giving Up The Ghost on the same CD. (The full album isn't available--don't know why.)
It's interesting that now Steve Jobs is essentially in the position of a record company exec as well as a radio station--he can encourage sales and awareness of certain bands over others. If he puts an indie band on the front splash page of the iTunes music store, he can give that band a huge boost in popularity. Or he can do what Big 5 instruct him to do. I wonder what kind of deals were made behind the scenes with regard to promotion. Will they sell advertising and placement?
13 - Chris Clark
>Just sampling before you buy? 30 second samples are available of each and every tune.
Wheeee, just like Amazon circa 1996!
Folks, the business model is simple. Free is the baseline price. Recorded music is now an advertisement for value-added entertainment services like concerts that cannot be replicated digitally.
14 - Anders Monsen
Apple never would have been able to to license a single tune from the Big Five if the music was free. According to many reports as much as two thirds of the 99 cent price per tune goes to the record company. Apple also needs to make money, and if 99 cents is too much, don't buy. Simple supply and demand.
Would the news impact have been as big if Apple went first for Indie tunes? There is a request feature in the Music Store, and no doubt more tunes will follow once Apple has reached agreements with the copyright owners, which sometimes even limits which tunes you can buy from an album.
'Free' music from the file-share services costs you time, risk (bad tune, virus), and more often than not via a slow connection. And not even a bit of remorse felt when downloading a song? I just wish I was sure that some of the money people are paying Apple for these songs end up with the musicians and songwriters, and not just line the pockets of company reps and RIAA lawyers.
Mac only? Come on, it's from Apple, the people who create Macs, remember? Can you replicate the ease of use found in iTunes in a Gates proprietary Windows and our way only--all common standards be damned -- world? iPods were Mac only to begin with, because Apple couldn't just port iTunes; they had to jump through hoops, work out a partnership, to supply the Windows world with the accessory that everyone wanted. Apple is not ignoring the market. They're targeting first something they know WILL work, because it's Mac and they kow Macs. It will arrive in the Windows world once that realm's problems are worked out.
Steve Jobs has at least accomplished one thing - a tremendous buzz for something. He ain't Jesus, Eric, and it's just music.
15 - Eric Olsen
A, fine points all, though you sound like an Apple-head. It doesn't much matter WHY the price is what it is, just that it is too high (for reasons stated earlier), this may make the all you eat monthly model better in the long run, or eventually the broadband license fee model.
Jobs gets all kinds of credit for the buzz, I'm just stating (I think) obvious limitations.
16 - Brian Flemming
I just watched the video of Jobs's presentation at apple.com. His PowerPoint, er, Keynote bullet points that compare Kazaa et al to the iTunes Music Store acknowledge that price is the one category that Apple hasn't achieved a victory. After all, the competition is "free." Jobs didn't try to hide this fact, at least.
He does point out that reliability, speed, quality, previewing, ease of use and other factors are clearly in the Music Store's favor. (He doesn't mention selection, which is not yet in Apple's favor.) However, his assertion that spending 15 minutes per song "working" on downloading and fixing and organizing Kazaa-downloaded music works out to "minimum wage" is a bit forced. You can get a lot of music with even fewer clicks on a file-sharing network. (Enter, say, "beck," highlight all results, double-click--by the time you come back from lunch, you'll have a lot more songs than you would have gotten with that many clicks at the Apple Music Store. Don't steal music.)
But the overall point is there. For people wealthy enough to want to pay 99 cents per song to avoid the inconvenience (oh, and "bad Karma," as Steve says) of file-sharing services, the iTunes Music Store is perfect. And I would guess that's a lot of people.
This seems in line with Tim O'Reilly's assertion that piracy is progressive taxation.
Oh, the new Apple commercials are pretty great, too. With one exception.
(Eric, what's with the "Apple-head" crack? I use a Mac, too. Should I be offended?)
17 - Phillip Winn
Apple-heads of the world, unite! Or: Macintosh, where even a beta web browser beats the crap out of MSIE 5.x for Windows!
On a more topical note, pretty good discussion of the good (mostly), the bad and the ugly is raging on some Mac-centric sites.
18 - Eric Olsen
Thanks for the very timely info Apple-heads!!
19 - Eric Olsen
Hey tech friends, check this out - guess they're serious about the Windows version:
"Title: Sr. Software Engineer
Req. ID: 1949938
Location: Santa Clara Valley, California
Country: United States
Looking for a Senior Software Engineer to desing and build Apple's
newest Consumer Application, iTunes for Windows. Must be very familiar
with application design, solid API design principles, user interface
engineering, and have a strong understanding of customer and workflow
issues. Must be self directed and have the demonstrated ability to lead
a technical team. Candidate must have a history of successful large
volume consumer product shipment.
B.S. or better in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science. Required skills include C, C++, UI, MFC, Win32, COM, DirectX,Installshield and application engineering. Exposure to networking and device drivers a
plus. Minimum of 10 years of directly related experience."
20 - Phillip Winn
Yeah, I'm not sure sure that's a great idea. While I dig MusicMatch Jukebox just fine on my W2K box, Quicktime is not my favorite piece of Windows software. Too bad they couldn't keep up the MMJB partnership in this case.
Oh well.