And it ain’t to the funny farm. 4 students have been sued by the RIAA for allegedly hosting between 75,000 and 1 million files. Wow, that’s quite a gap!
[T]he music industry has been slow to adapt to the changing patterns of music consumers, many of whom want their music on an a la carte, or song-by-song basis, as opposed to buying an entire CD.
Slow?! They downright just haven’t adapted. Give the people what they want and they will pay for it. Rumor has it, Apple may be up to something good. In any case, the longer the industry takes to change it’s ways and embrace the Internet as a tool by which to promote bands, the longer people are going to get used to eating for free. Know what I’m sayin?
From what I hear, the Apple service will be a DRM ridden proprietary monster. AAC with protection controls built in to limit burning, sharing, and transferring. iTunes will be the only player available to handle the format, and iPods upgraded to handle AAC will be getting a boost in file sharing lock-outs, so third party apps for reclaiming iPod stored MP3s will be rendered useless. Most likely Mac only. Sad, as Apple should be able to break the market with a new, well implemented music service, but unfortunately they are buckling to the desires of the labels file protection requirements.
The way I see it, it can be whatever it’s going to be. The point is that Apple has negotiated/is negotiating with all five majors for a one-stop shop to download music. That’s assuming the rumors are true. No one else offers this (yet). And besides, shortly after it’s released, it’ll get hacked and everything will be just fine. And who gives a shit if PC users can’t use it out of the gate…I mean, besides PC users…
Most doesn’t count. And besides, what Liquid Audio offered was not significant. In a past life I worked pretty closely with them, and while I thought they had a good technology and some of the best people working on it, they ultimately failed. Was it because they didn’t offer the hits? Yes. That’s what people want. People will pay $.99/track for the hits. The whole problem is that that very business model is one that the five major distribution companies have been trying to move away from for years. If people buy a single, what would be the incentive for them to buy the rest of the album? Nevermind the fact that consumers will start figuring out that “the hit” is about the only thing interesting on a lot of what is being pushed down their throats. Not everyone gives a shit about having the artwork and a complete package. I’ll go so far as to say that more people are caring less about even having a tangible good to hold in their hand or display on their shelf. Of course I have no numbers to back any of that up. As for the service being Mac-only, it’s just another way to get a few more people to switch. Like I said before, Apple may be the first ones to do it, but they won’t be the only ones.
One thing I left out was the whole DRM experience, which also had to do with Liquid Audio’s failure. It’s real fucking simple. People on the Internet have no patience. If you build a solution whereby Joe Consumer has to do everything just short of promising his first-born to Apple, it’s not gonna work. It’s not going to matter if you have “the hits.” Make it easy enough that my dear grandma, who hasn’t touched a computer since they used ticker tape, and you may just be on to something.
mmm, yeah, I agree, but liquid audio offered music from most of the big 5, and nobody wanted to touch them, because of the uneccessary hurdles put in place just to use the files. I’m not sure hacking will be as easy as it was with the iPod, though I’ll keep my fingers crossed. And I, for one, wold love to have the service be Mac only, as the platform has been playing second fiddle in most of the supported services, if at all. shut the PC users down for once. I thought it was beautiful when iPod was Mac only, and the lust factor was leaving 95% of the market with blue balls. That’s why I’d like to see Apple succeed here, because they are capable of blowing the doors off the music service industry with the bad-ass integration they know and do so well. I just happen to be hyper-aware of the achilles heel that is DRM.