Apple to Launch Music Service? 877
discstickers writes "The San Jose Mercury News is running an article about an Apple music service that might be ready to launch next month. $.99 a song with the ability to burn to CD doesn't sound too bad."
At first glance... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:At first glance... (Score:5, Interesting)
I sure hope so. I buy pretty much 1-2 CDs a year now -- not because I pirate the songs, it's because I don't want to spend $15 on 2 songs. Being able to only buy the stuff I like could also allow independent labels to get some of the action. It would be great if an artist without a label could also hook into this service, so 5 million OS X users could have a shot at your song instead of the 30 people that go to the local bar.
New slogan: Listen different. :)
Re:At first glance... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, seriously. If you're buying an entire CD for just two songs, it's a travesty. Furthermore, if (all other things being equal) we measure how good an artist is by the average strength of their songs, than an artist producing only two good songs per CD sucks, quantitatively speaking.
Now, of course, those of us who buy mix CDs have an alternate problem - usually either the entire CD sucks, or the entire CD rocks. Thankfully, Amazon.com is there to save the day
Re:At first glance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At first glance... (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure where you're shopping, but popular CDs are running $14.99 around here (DC area) - you have to go to the used CD stores or the bargain bins to get down into the $10 range - and the used stores are only $2 or so cheaper than the new ones around here.
Besides, when was the last time you bought an album for the album and not just a couple of songs? Meatloaf? Pink Floyd? There aren't that manny artists producing thematic albums, instead of "compilations of 3-5 minute songs we just wrote."
I'd pay $0.99 a track to create my own version of someone's Greatest Hits.
Re:At first glance... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I want a full album, it should be less expensive to go to the store and buy it. But I don't mind paying a slight premium for just the one song I want to hear.
Slashdot is full of cocksucking wankers who try to insist they want free speech when they really want free napster.
Re:At first glance... (Score:3, Informative)
AAC beats mp3 by only about 10-20% in listening tests - it's trounced by RealAudio 9 (at very low bitrates), WMA7 (at high bitrates), WMA8 (at low bitrates only thanks to a bug that causes the "metal" sound), WMA9 (at all bitrates, particularly good for classical), WMA9 Pro (160kbps is its bottom end and it does hyperstereo better than anything else until Vorbis gets n-channel coupling), mp3pro (at low bitrates, noticably warmer than the original though), MPC (at high bitrates) and Ogg Vorbis, which happily poops all over both AAC and MP3 (and I'd put them in the same class) at all bitrates and gives all the others at least a run for their money.
Note that this is the best case. There are a lot of frightfully bad AAC encoders, and only really one or maybe two good ones. Use a bad encoder, and- seriously - you'd have been better off with Xing.
AAC was tuned for the 32-64kbps per channel range, not the high fidelity range. And the only codecs that are really noticeably better than MP3 at high bitrates are MPC, MP2 and maybe, maybe Vorbis - there's little or no difference between most of them at the high end, it's at the 64kbps per channel range and below that the codecs' relative qualities start to separate them...
Re:At first glance... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if your math is right... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like the album concept will disappear. This just gives more choice. I would gladly pay $20 for 20 great songs.
$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that being able to pick song by song would be nice in the short term, I do think it would have some long term consequences that may not be so good.
Imagine some future world where everyone gets their music via these services... you could easily wind up with a situation where every new song is overproduced (and possibly run by one of those 'AI' music-hit detectors mentioned here previously) to try to ensure it is a hit, since any time spent writing/recording it will be 'wasted' if not enough people pay for the song by itself. Right now you have an environment where artists can put some experimental tunes in between the sure-fire hits. Maybe these tracks hit the mark and become huge, maybe they tank, but at least they are trying something different. If everything is per-song I think we'll eventually see even less artist experimentation and artist growth than we do now, and that is scary.
Re:$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe, that there are different kinds of music consumers. On the one side we have the Top-40 audience. They only want the hits. They buy CD-singles and compilations, download single songs from file-sharing services and listen to heavy-rotation radio stations. On the other side we have the album buyers. They buy the full album, adore soulseek, and hate most of the radio stations. I am sure that there are different in-between types of music listeners, but for the sake of simplicity let's just look at these two.
If you only like hits then that is what you will keep buying. I would hope, that full albums will not be priced number of songs*$0.99. So album buyers will still listen to all songs an artist has to offer. A lot of artists will continue to make the music they want to and not only machine-selected hits.
Re:$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:3, Insightful)
Since electronic distribution makes changes easy to make, I can see a lot of experimentation done in terms of pricing. I can even see a lot more artists not going through record companies at all because they can make more money recording for on-line services like Apple's.
The article says nothing about price or burning (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$1/song? I'll bite. (Score:3, Funny)
That's not the reason! (Score:4, Interesting)
Last time I looked, CD singles cost a substantial fraction of what albums cost, and I think that's why albums are popular. If we can reduce the transaction cost, as Apple has, then we can sell individual songs.
I like buying albums, though, because there are at least a few songs in a typical album that I will enjoy that I didn't hear before buying it. For instance, I bought Vanessa Daou's 'Make you Love' CD based on a couple of tracks, and my favourite song happens to be one I didn't hear before I bought the CD. I wonder how you could work around that problem. If people only hear one song on the radio, that's the song they'll buy.
I wonder if this might be a way to eliminate the truly stultifying "we only play three songs" commercial radio experience? It maybe become necessary, for marketing purposes, to play a wider variety!
D
Still a little pricey. (Score:5, Insightful)
99 cents a track.
~12 tracks on a disc.
~12 bucks for the music, and you have to provide the bandwith, physical media, and case. oh, and no liner notes.
Thanks, but I'll go to my local indie store, where they have the media, case, and liner notes all for 12 bucks.
Re:Still a little pricey. (Score:4, Interesting)
so for my 12 bucks (and providing my own media at $0.35, liner if i want it), i get the equivalent of your buying 5-6 discs.
hmmm. $12 vs. $60 doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Re:Still a little pricey. (Score:4, Insightful)
And some songs you don't want...
Re:Still a little pricey. (Score:3, Insightful)
Go listen to Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, A Love Supreme, or (gasp) almost any symphony from what the modern industry calls the "classical" genre, and you'll see that an 'album' doesn't have to be a collection of bad songs with a few hits thrown on there.
Re:Still a little pricey. (Score:3, Insightful)
- Liner notes: I throw them away.
- Jewel case: I throw it away.
- Media: I encode the songs and then stuff it into a CD binder. A very, very dusty CD binder.
- Bandwidth: Not a problem...
I guess I'll be using their service, if they can give me 160kbps VBR (High) files, or better.And you know, if they would hook into mp3.com or AudioGalaxy ... this would really, really take off. Commercialized formula music over here, indie trash to sort through for the gems over here. Take yer pick: $0.99 per.
Re:Still a little pricey. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm not going to tell you *not* to got to your local indie store, of course, but there's some stuff you left out here.
Now, they *could* mess up and not provide any of this stuff, which would be lame, but Apple is the only outfit I can imagine that might possibly get this part basically right on the first try. We'll have to see.
On a related note, the expected debut of this new service could well be what is holding up the introduction of the long-overdue updated iPod line.
Oh blah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow, I really don't see the big value..
Also, your "indie store" might not be so "indie" after all... check into it.
Verified details? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple DRM... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which indicates there is something in it that stops the rest of us using it. This would further indicate either a closed format with codecs only for these two. Or DRM on top of something that exists.
Now is that bad ? Maybe not, but I was pretty sure that the Slashdot perfect model was
Download for
Re:Apple DRM... (Score:5, Informative)
From the LA Times:
Advanced Audio Codec info (Score:5, Informative)
The LA Times article [latimes.com] says that the AAC files can be DRM locked, but that Apple has required that they can be burned onto a CD, which would unlock them.
Re:Apple DRM... (Score:4, Funny)
Bitch that you had to pay 99 cents for the song.
Re:Apple DRM... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard that you can buy books from audible.com using iTunes. Supposedly, the download is encrypted, but you can move it to your iPod at will, and you can make MP3 CD's through iTunes that will play in any MP3 CD player (and, by extension, copied to any other medium). I imagine any Apple Music initiative would work in a similar manner.
If any company is going to make a DRM scheme that protects my rights as well as the copyright holders', I'd bet money it will be Apple.
Re:Apple DRM... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apple DRM... (Score:3, Informative)
It does contain DRM tech to prevent copying. There appear to be a number of portable digital music players that support it, such as the Panasonic SV-SD80 and the Nokia Music Player.
For more info, see the AAC homepage [vialicensing.com] and a Google cache of Dolby's announcement regarding BMG and Universal [216.239.37.100].
Personally, I'd rather see FLAC or some other lossless encoding available. But that'd give them DRM nightmares (burn it to CD as CD-A and the DRM is gone, but you can recreate the song perfectly - no transcoding issues). Oh well. They'll eventually get there.
$.99 for a song?! (Score:3, Interesting)
For a typical 12 song CD, that would cost as much as the meatspace equivalent. And when I purchase it for $12 at Target, or where ever else, I get to keep a physical token.
I could, however, see using this for hard to find CD's, like the bad plus [thebadplus.com]. A dollar per song would be worth it when I can't find it in stores, or wait for Amazon to special order it.
But for everything else, if they charged $.25 per song, they couldn't upload them fast enough for me. As long as they're a dollar, I'll think long and hard about downloading anything.
Re:$.99 for a song?! (Score:3, Insightful)
But, hey, why am I surprised that people are still finding this too expensive? Hell, if they offered them at $.01/song then people would still bitch.
Excepting that this service doesn't apply to me (since I own neither a Mac nor an iPod), it sounds pretty damn good. I'd be happy to pay $.99/track for songs I like as long as they were high quality and readily available. I'd certainly buy more music than I do now.
Re:$.99 for a song?! (Score:5, Funny)
In order for it to be an Apple product, it has to be an Insanely Great idea that is overpriced enough to make you think twice before buying it.
This qualifies.
Re:$.99 for a song?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no.
For one, you hear a lot of complaints which run "Why should I pay [$12-20] for a CD when I only like two or three songs on it?" If that's true, that means you're only paying $2 or $3 with this pricing scheme, so it suddenly becomes less goofy.
For another, $12 is the exception, not the rule, for pricing--if you can find everything you want on CD at Target, more power to you. I can't. Best Buy charges $13-16 for CDs, generally, and they have about the best price to selection ratio of any place that I've found. The actual list price for CDs seems to be $18.99--and you may think people never pay that, but if they find the CD they've been looking for at the Virgin Megastore and nowhere else, you can bet they grit their teeth and pony up the cash.
Sure, there are going to be people for whom $0.99 a song is too much, and I think it'd be a good idea to have something like a "10% off when you buy the whole CD" promotion (and maybe to let you buy the physical CD for another $3-5 or some such). But I don't think it's going to be that big a deal.
Not unreasonable! (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, it's common practice that when manufacturers break out single units that they charge more. Ever buy a Coke from a vending machine? How much did you pay for it, 65? And what is the cost per unit when you buy a 12 pack from Food Lion? 40/ea.? Nothing new here.
Third, there are real savings here. Yeah, if you want the entire album, you may be better off just buying it from the store. However, if you just want one or two songs, then you have saved yourself $10 or more. I can think of a LOT of songs from the past 30 years that I'd like to buy, but I don't care to get the whole album. There's a lot of one-hit wonders out there, but very few artists that can pack out an album with great material.
I think that the price is right. In fact, if I were doing it, I'd set the pricing as a range, from 75 for the "moldy oldies" to $1.25 for the latest stuff. Really, the only hitch I see so far is that they haven't answered the question of DRM. If there is DRM technology built into this, then yes, you're right that the cost is way too much. I wouldn't be willing to pay more than 25 for songs with DRM, if that.
Confllict with Apple Records? (Score:5, Interesting)
The best source for these rumors was /. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just waiting for some electronic music distributor to realize that they'll make more money if they distribute MP3s and use social pressures to discourage piracy. If an album cost $4 online, and they'll let you do whatever you like with the music, why would you steal?
Apple Corps (Score:3, Funny)
Even Apple doesn't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even Apple doesn't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I should get into progressive rock again...one of DJ Venom's new mix CDs has 99 tracks on it. Ugh $98.01? Then again, you have to wonder what kind of music this service will offer...if they let Apple's marketing guys decide on it then it's sure to be stuff niether of us would want.
As for doomed to failure, plenty of people (suprisingly) use
Two things would get me to use this. (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Catalog choices. If the selection is limited to Top 40 hits of the past ten years, no way. But if the choices are wide and deep (and maybe even out of print songs as was suggested earlier [janisian.com], and
3. Previews, allowing me to edit out the album filler. $.99 is cheap, and most albums only have a max of 4 good tracks.
~3% Not Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:~3% Not Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
a) 3% marketshare is small, yes, but that's a good thing, as far as the record industry is concerned: if this is found to increase the levels of piracy, at least it won't spread to the other 97%.
b) Apple consumers are, generally speaking, probably more likely to go for something like this; Apple's products cost more, therefore the odds of Apple customers having broadband and iPods is higher, plus they are less likely to be using p2p becuase it is free if they have more money than the average computer user.
Then again, I could be talking out of my ass.
Re:~3% Not Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is, will the content mafia actually go for it? Many have already pointed out that the available info is suspiciously vague and inconsistent. (e.g., some stories are reporting "unlimited downloads for $10 mo. subscription, plus 99c per song if you want a burnable copy," other stories are just straight 99c per song, etc.) I doubt that in the end, Apple will be able to bring the content mafia around to the key user-friendliness points that are necessary to wean music lovers from P2P - most important among them, the ability to burn CDs.
So I'll add mine to the growing chorus of predictions: Yes, if Apple actually does this, it will be quite popular. But it will never actually happen, because the content mafia will be unable to shake their ingrained stomp-on-the-customer mindset. At the last minute, they'll all gang together and insist on some kind of booby-trapped format that will make the downloaded music useless, and Apple will go back to chanting "rip, mix, burn" to the P2P masses. Summary - this will be yet another "greatest opportunity an obsolete, copyright-abusing, customer-despising industry ever missed."
(and just for context, I own over 2,700 CDs, have owned and sold many more over the years, paid for them all, and at present have ripped about 3,000 high-quality MP3s onto my home server for use through portables and stereo. I don't share those files P2P, and have no inherent inclination to do so. But my new policy is - every time I buy a CD that turns out to be booby-trapped (turns out I have about 5 of them), I'll be cracking the encryption where possible and ripping the whole thing into a P2P share directory, plus 5 other CDs from that same label. When the content mafia started selling booby-trapped CDs that won't work on computers, and lobbying Washington to force more booby-traps into my computer, they made an enemy of one of their best customers. I hope they go down in flames, and artists start selling directly to the public. Maybe Apple can help facilitate that, after it realizes the content mafia is just dangling a fake carrot.)
Try before you buy (Score:5, Insightful)
iPhoto Purchasing System (Score:3, Insightful)
To order music through a similar system of Apple's would be a dream! I hope they're having success in offering a variety of services (.Mac, iphoto ordering, etc), and the addition of music seems a natural step for them to take.
Read the article - it says nothing about $.99 (Score:3, Informative)
$0.99 is still too high... (Score:3, Insightful)
-11 tracks @
-Alternately, the CD is 9.96 at my local Target.
-With tax, that's $10.65 (with CD cover, notes, lyrics, etc).
Can anyone then explain which is the better buy, especially after I pay for the DSL connection from home, and the blank CD?
Oh, and if I may add, the cost of the music for taking my friend to the store to get the CD, then rip it and share it with me...$0. Of course, that's just so I can listen to it and decide if I want to spend my $10.65 on it as well ^_^
Re:$0.99 is still too high... (Score:3, Interesting)
-11 tracks @
-Alternately, the CD is 9.96 at my local Target.
-With tax, that's $10.65 (with CD cover, notes, lyrics, etc).
Can anyone then explain which is the better buy, especially after I pay for the DSL connection from home, and the blank CD?
Do you like every song on the CD? Every song? If so, then true, you won't benefit from this service. But if you only bought it for 1-2 songs, then you've just saved $8. And can you seriously include the cost of DSL/Cable in there? Would you not have the high-speed connection otherwise?
LA Times (Score:3, Insightful)
As seen on macslash [macslash.org]
What gets me is the "registered iPod" bit...can't we do anything anonymously anymore? Geeze!
Apple Corps? (Score:3, Insightful)
What ever happened to Apple's agreement with the Beatles? Way back in the early 80s (or so), the Beatles were concerned about trademark infringement against their "Apple Corps" music label, but the issue was settled when it was clear that Apple would not be in the music business. Things got dicey again when music processing became a normal everyday computer-based activity, but I could still see a clear distinction. A service like this, though, would be a likely trademark conflict.
Anybody know what became of that agreement?
Too little, too late. (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently asked a non-geek who gave up buying CDs a few years back if he would be willing to pay about $0.15 for this kind of service. He said no. This is the same person who spend $60+ on a concert ticket.
The paying for recorded music meme is dying, and there's very little that can be done to prevent it. No law is enforcable when more than about 10% of the population are breaking it, and so they will have to either loosen copyright law, or not enforce it at all. Artists are worth money, and people will pay good money to see them. Recordings are just advertising, and most people object to paying for advertising.
Another article and AAC (Score:3, Interesting)
Emusic (Score:3, Informative)
15 bucks a month with unlimited downloading of mp3s that you can burn. A much better deal
(shameless plug)
if you want to use a GTK2 Emusic album downloader that I wrote, Hot Lead [arcaner.com]
http://www.emusic.com
Make a record executive happy. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you really like music, you would never accept a lack of subsonic. You buy full albums of artists you like, and you Kazaa / live 365 to find new artists. If you don't really like music, you probably have never even heard of Kazaa. Maybe you will like this service, then.
In a world where costs have been cut dramatically, you can't go on charging the same. Tapes were a step above records acoustically, and CD's were a premium above tapes (despite being cheaper to manufacture). What do MP3's offer? They're cheap. Charge a premium for a lower quality? Nuts.
All you can eat 128k MP3's for 19.95 per month, with 180k MP3's available for 29.95, and lossless CD for 59.95. Why is supply, demand, and competition such a hard concept for record executives?
Possible negative effects (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, then again maybe we'll not see a whole lot of change after all
On a completely different note, if you download an entire CD, they should make available a printable version of the cover and liner notes.
Re:Possible negative effects (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait.. wait wait wait. If someone likes it, it must be good for something. Granted, we all grow older and wiser, to learn what "good music" really is. So if every song is good, whether it is because I liked it for the arist or because I'm naive is good!
I liked greenday about 10 years ago. I still love 'em. Good stuff. And about 80% of their tracks, I'd say is definitely worth downloading.
What if every artist was a greenday and not a one/two hit wonder.
Re:Possible negative effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another perspective. Some kids in a band start getting pretty good, a little local press and some regional gigs. They even get a label scout to come check them out, but she says "I like your sound, it's just not what we're pushing in the industry right now. Sorry."
Band flips a bird to the industry, spends a few thousands bucks on a used Mac and some really nice mics. They record an album and get the drummer's graphic designer girlfriend to design a fancy new logo and website. Then, they start distributing their tracks online at $.50 a pop. It gets picked up by a few indie music bloggers and then all of the sudden they're making enough money to upgrade their equipment and tour the east coast.
Towards the end of the tour, the record scout is back, ready to talk about a deal. "Nah," the drummer says. "We're making plenty of money doing what we love, we don't have to sell out to you bastards and we're going back into the studio here in a few weeks to record our second album. Feel free to download it in a few weeks!"
Every day, it's becoming cheaper and cheaper to record music. For $10,000, you can set yourself up with a near-professional quality setup. That $10,000 wouldn't even come close to the studio time required for an album. Online distribution is the last step towards breaking industry stranglehold on music.
sosumi (Score:3, Funny)
Paid For? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does Apple plan to sell Recordable Media for these tracks, that comes tarrif free?
I think it computes (Score:3, Funny)
$4,571.82 for my music stash, not including taxes.
So, letsee... hmmm... [scribbles] wait... hourly rate... [scribbles]...
$9,354.23 searching for my music stash, not including connection costs.
But wait... hmmm.... [scribbles] hmmm... broken marriage... [scribbles] hmmm... gray hairs... [scribbles] inane chats with "chics" from Argentina... [sobs] hmmm... downloading Pink Floyd and hearing some Iranian guy... [sobs]
So yeah, I think I'll pay for it.
[scribbles] ...
One of the problems with "Napster", et. al. (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget about it being free--it was just easier to go to Napster or WinMX and get the song you wanted. No funny players to install, no crazy licensing software, and all the songs were there.
I believe that if the record companies got together and made millions of songs available for download at prices ranging from $.10 to $1.00 depending on the age of the song, and maybe a subscription that gives you a set number, they'd do well. But it has to be simple--type in the name of the song, click download, and get an MP3.
Let's hope Apple gets it right. (Will this also cause the old lawsuit between Apple Records and Apple Computer to come up again?)
Copy CDs Legally in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Song Length?? (Score:3, Insightful)
More like 0.99n + 99 (Score:3, Insightful)
Too damn expensive... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus you're buying intangibles, such as the pride of ownership. Yeah, I said pride. Owning a CD means you're more of a fan than somebody who has an mp3, even if they paid for it. CD collections are important things that impact a person's perceived personality and lifestyle. First thing I do when I visit a person's place for the first time is check out their CD collection. And yes, having a collection of all burns does negatively impact my perception of them.
This isn't to say I think it's necessarily a bad idea. I am a subscriber and an avid downloader from eMusic, and I don't feel their price is too expensive if you like what thy offer. My biggest complaints with the emusic model are the 128 kbit mp3s and the lack of major label catalogues, though they have a lot of great second tiers. If Apple does this right, they'll adopt a similar model, or at the very least offer volume discounts.
I don't think I'd ever buy a _single_ song on mp3, mostly because I feel a lot of work and effort goes into making an album into an artform that transcends simply slapping a bunch of tracks on a disc. I'd DOWNLOAD a single song, if it wer popular, to see if I'd like the album, but after I've already got it I'm certainly not going to pay for it. Catch-22.
Now maybe if they combined it with an "uncapturable" radio service, with the option to "purchase this song," they'd have a winner. Apple realizes the important of second string artists (as evidenced by the mp3s you get "gratis" on a new mac...fantastic stuff, without a Nelly or Britney track in site).
Apple Records, Inc. (Score:5, Insightful)
$1/track strikes me as a pretty good deal. I imagine the price is not imformed so much by Apple (while you may think their stuff is expensive, this scheme does nothing to directly contribute to their bottom line, i.e. hardware sales), as it is likely informed by whatever potential deals they want to strike with the existing content providers.
The pieces are all there - Akamai's hooked up, hell, the whole QuickTime network must be in bed with several studios already with the movie trailer video streaming service (easily the best on the net). One wonders if they have already laid the groundwork for those music-based partnerships.
And, lets not forget QuickTime. It's fantastically powerful and flexible, and they could package their media any way they wish. Some have mentioned the lack of liner notes, artwork etc. I would consider that moot if they provided, some real digital packaging. In Mac OS X, you can assign graphic files to the background of windows, you've got those 32bit 256x256 icons... if I could browse through my MP3 folder and have those icons sized nice and big with the appropriate artwork, fully tagged ID3-wise, and it's a high-quality file... yeah, I'd bite. Absolutely.
On another note, there is DRM of a sort in the iPod, specifically for the Audible content, but I think that is unique to their format and not system wide.
Re:Apple Records, Inc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Quicktime is AWFUL (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know what to tell you, man. I've got the latest QuickTime running on my PC at work (Athlon 1.8Ghz w/XP and QT 6.0) and it has only asked me the upgrade thing once. It's not as elegant in operation as the Mac one, I'll grant you, but it's hardly the catastrophe you make it out to be.
It could be that you blew through the intaller, pounding Enter past the screen where it explicitly asks you how you want to map things. You also missed the control panel where you can set it after the fact. It's in the system tray usually upon install.
And, what's the problem with the interface? Pretty straightforward, don't you think? Did you miss Play, Skip back/forward, pause, volume? Worse, do you like the Windows Media Player, which is more like the mess you describe?
QuickTime was a real pig on Windows around v3-4 (some of which might be MS's fault), but it's really not a problem now.
Conflict with Apple Publishing Company? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mac users == perfect market (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the perfect market to test this pay-to-play scheme
If this scheme doesn't work with Mac users, it won't work with a larger audience...
if its not one thing, its another (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point it, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY THE WHOLE ALBUM! This isn't meant to replace gonig to the store and buying a CD. It is supposed to COMPLIMENT it. Buy one song. If you like it and feel comfortable buying the whole CD, why on earth WOULD you sit there downloading inferior quality files to burn to a generic CD-R without any liner notes? Look, wookies don't live on Endor, OK? IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!
The whole point is to let people choose a few songs here or there. Or to give a band who can't get the $ together to record a whole album a chance to have their music distributed AND receive some money from it. And do you think it'll just be major label music? Let me tell you this - if this whole thing DOES go through, you can rest assured you'll see a "featured
And as far as the whole "I can get it for free on KaZaa" argument - well, have it then. When the DOJ comes knocking on your door after the RIAA's spyware tracked u down after downloading a bugged file, let me know how that free prison food is. Besides, the kind of music I like generally isn't available on KaZaa, because KaZaa reflects, for the most part, a large portion of society that listens to really bad pop music. If I were to trust any company to make cool, obscure music available to the masses, its Apple.
So before you start bitching and whining about price and convenience, please know what you're talking about. They're not trying to replace going to your local record shop to buy a new album. They're trying to offer a NEW service that will be easy to use, fun to explore, and relatively inexpensive considering the years of joy that a single song can bring.
To the $0.99 whiners (Score:3, Insightful)
If a single song cost less than 1/Nth the cost of an N-track album, then why wouldn't you just download all the songs individually, and save a little money?
I challenge any of the whiners out there to present me with an example where you pay *more* for a set of something than you would buying them seperately.
If you pay $12 (or more) for a 12-track CD, there is no way to say paying $0.99 a track is a rip-off, except for the hardcopy/liner-notes argument, which in my opinion is offset by not having to go to the store or wait days for Amazon.
Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone else see the bullshit in this?
Phish (Score:4, Interesting)
the price is around $10-15 depending on which show you get and how many songs the download has in it. They average about 2-4 CD's per download set after it is decompressed from SHN and burned to audio CD.
Apparently, they plan on releasing previous shows and all future shows in this format. It's a nice change from the $25 each for the live albums they had put out previously.
Maybe some day, other bands will follow suit.
For those of you who just want one song, and are willing to pay MORE than it would cost at the CD store just so you only pay for one song, you should probably start listening to better music that isn't on the top 40. top 40 is just a measurement of how much the CD stores were force fed that particular album by the record label, it isn't a measurement of quality or popularity by any means.
If this new service has all the songs from all the labels, full length and in a reasonable format for both lossy and non-lossy compression (read: not encyrpted for DRM), it might be a decent thing. But at 99 cents a song, only lossy downloads, and probably not many artists signed up for it, add the fact that it will say DMCA and DRM all over the package, and I doubt this service will do any good.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends: does the customized CD have the original CD audio files, or CD audio recordings of a lossy-compressed format? If I'm going to be paying for it, I want CD-A, not MP3s.
Don't like this system. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I pay $1 a track, $15 a cd when I can go to a used Record/CD store, pick-up used copies of the artists I want to hear for about $6-$9 a pop. And lets say that Artist releases 5-6 Songs off said album I got as a used CD, Those with this music service from apple will have to go out, get to the site, log in, find the track, pay for track, wait for confirmation of the payment being recieved, then once that confirm is recieved - download it, and then play it where as all I had to do was find case, open case, remove cd, insert cd, play, enjoy.
Oh and I don't have to worry about falling victim to someone else's idea of "High Quality". Commonly people and services will encode at 128 or 192 to save space on their drives, and if you even remotely concidered yourself an audiophile, such sampling would be really sub-standard to your ears. =)
Besides, I for one am still really leary of any site that wants me to pay for digital downloads, what's really there to stop the RIAA or some of their Brain Washed supportive Artists from coming after members on that service? And what's worse from such acts like in the case of Napster, this time they'll have your Real Name, Real Address, Real Credit Card information, etc where as on Napster you at least had Annoniminity from such worries.
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW... I went to a Mr. Bungle concert back in the early 90s in Cleveland. Very cool show. I wish I knew who the opening band was though. They were awesome too.
Well then (Score:4, Insightful)
So the big question is (and always has been), are people generally more like you or more like me?
If the service really does offer MP3's for download at $1 a song, then we might get a chance to find out.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the existence of 'free' (modulo the long term social cost of killing the creation of future music) alternatives could prevent this potentially sustainable model from catching hold.
Normally, when a society wants to proscribe some activity which is destructive to its long term health (such as the widespread freeloading of music), it uses social norms and, in extreme cases, laws to prevent them. Hmm - maybe copying music without giving anything back to the artist ought to be socially unacceptable, or maybe even illegal?
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
But please, if you remove the RIAA from the picture, and thus their bilking of the arist, the artists would like to be paid *somehow*.
I give my music away on mp3.com, besonic.com for free. But if I entered into a recording contract, I would like to imagine that people dont want all their music for free, for ever, no ifs ands or buts.
Kazaa is preferable to handing over money to the RIAA's members, but paying 1$ a song should be preferable to most people than getting all their music for free.
Even building a cheap mini studio to make music can cost anywhere from a grand (if you dont mind poor sound quality and only listen to intrumental/vocal music), to ten grand (approaching radio-quality production quality, more electronic type music). While many artists would like to give music away for free, its just not economically possible. So please temper your opinions with the realization that money has to come from somewhere
People say musicians make money from touring, but alot of the new kind of music coming out doesn't make sense in a live context (electronic music, mostly.) So its a pipe dream to imagine that getting distributed copies of music should always be free because musicians can just tour
Thanks.
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
Re:99c / track? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's worth looking into at least.
Re:99c / track? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if:
a.) The selection's good.
b.) The quality is guaranteed.
c.) The transfers happen quickly.
d.) There's an ability to preview the song.
Believe it or not, the price tag is not the major contributer to using Kazaa. It provides the best service. But it's got plenty of room for somebody with good bandwidth to come in and make a better model of it.
You have to remember, this is the same country where people drive gas-guzzling SUVS, pay $3.50 for a coffee and pay over $1.00 for bottled water. They want quality and service, the cost isn't really that big of issue.
Re:99c / track? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:99c / track? (Score:3, Informative)
Key difference: Listen.com requires windows. Apple is doing this to make an apple version, because there has been little effort on the part of 3rd parties to cater to apple users.
Imperfect Selection (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:99c / track? (Score:5, Insightful)
An Apple-designed service can be expected to be well-designed, reliable, and cool. If 4 major record labels really do provide content this could take off in a major way. This could materially increase Apple's marketshare. Contrast this with Microsoft's DRM-laden plans and you'll see that there will be a clear choice
My employer pays a lot of ASCAP fees, and we have to support Limewire because we have legitimate needs for rapid access to a vast music library. The #1 question during the iTunes 'rollout' was "can I download MP3s with this ?" That answer is about to change.
Re:99c / track? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:99c / track? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that because you might actually pay for something that is otherwise available for free if the quality of that product is offered at a price you consider worth spending on it? Gasp
Re:99c / track? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyones analogies to other real-world products are cute, but they don't apply. One guy said, (paraphrasing) "you can live off grass and rainwater, but you dont, do you?" No... but if there was a totally free, in-home chef that would make me food exactly like I'd pay for at a restaurant, but it takes him a little longer or I can't get exactly what I want off the menu at any given time, I'd probably choose that alternative a lot of the time.
People post, "Kazaa is annoying", "slow downloads", etc. For movies, maybe. For most songs (I realize a lot of smaller artists are not represented as well), downloads are plentiful and fast, and for a 5 MB file it's QUICK.
Others post, "You have to supply the bandwidth, CD, no liner notes, etc". This is true. But a LOT of people don't want a CD, don't care about liner notes. If you like the band enough to want all 12-15 songs, I totally agree, buy the CD. But for most people, this is more of what they want. And obviously the people that would use KaZaA or this service already have cable modem or DSL (or dialup and don't care about speed).
I think $.99 is a good deal for a track, a GREAT deal. But when it comes down to logging on to some secure server, giving a credit card # up, etc, it's just going to be quicker to hit KaZaA or whatever P2P alternative there is and download.
I agree with the parent, I don't think anything like this, however good the service, will take off as long as a free alternative exists that is anywhere near as user friendly as the for-pay service.
Mark
Re:Hmmmmmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine it would be a much higher adoption rate, if it were all this, and the RIAA and record congloms saw $$ coming in.
But in a sense you are right. There will always be those that weren't going to pay for it to begin with.
Someone mentioned one of Apple's good philosophies above.
Kepp the honest people honest by offering incentive such as 5 liscense packs of OS X for only $70 more
Re:Err no... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean duh, dude do you know whut a iPod is.
His question wasn't really off the mark when you factor DRM into this. I'm sure he's well aware that the iPod doesn't have a CD player, he was merely asking if copying the track to CD marks the song as 'used' in the DRM system, and thus stops you from transferring it to the iPod.
In other words...maybe you're the one who needs to do a little thinking before posting, jackass.
Re:I'd imagine (Score:5, Insightful)
Some rockstars care about the quality of their product.
Re:I have a question for an Ipod user (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More 1-Click fraud purchases? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:RIAA and their Ignored Salvation (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between one of these CD's and one you purchase in a store is that the one you assemble would presumably not have any filler that you don't like. You would get 12 songs that you enjoy for $12 rather than having to buy approximately 6 discs at $12/each to get two good tracks off of each one... which is the better deal?
The radio companies aren't stupid... they know they put out filler. Most people don't do the math and figure they just paid $12 for a CD for that ONE song that they liked... thus paying $12 for that ONE song...
I can purchase songs at 30c/each AND
Again, your pricing off the filler... think about just getting the "quality" songs that you personally enjoy... none of the B.S.... the songs are worth more then, no?
the ability to get a partial refund -- say, 90% -- for songs that I download but don't enjoy. So lets say that I download 200 songs in a given month and I decide a third of those (65) of those are worth keeping. I'd pay $19.50 for the ones I keep and another $4.95 for the ones I "returned." Frankly, I'm not going to bother spending 10 minutes of my life tracking down that song I just returned to them on Kazzaa to save 30c.
Go to amazon or any one of the millions of sites out there that offers previews... just preview the song there. And if you're going to argue that point, why pay ANYTHING for a song you don't want?