iTunes Might Lose Labels 614
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"
Payola (Score:1, Interesting)
2. Pay radio stations around the country hoards of money to play her phony 'hits' [villagevoice.com]
3. Declare 'hits' too popular for existing iTunes pricing structure
4. Profit!
iTunes monopoly (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't sell it any other way, it's true that there are freely usable DRM formats that are supported by every portable player other than iPod. Unfortunately, iPod has 90%+ of the market share, and for DRM it only supports Fairplay.
Sorry that people don't realize it, but independent musicians are screwed because they cant sell protected songs for the price they want.
But whatever, people will never ever see anything wrong in anything Apple does.
Even Microsoft's DRM format is more open than Apple's!
Add me (Score:2, Interesting)
Looks like I'll be sticking for P2P. And, despite what the RIAA says, I tend to buy the album if I really like it.
Automatic Pricing System (Score:2, Interesting)
That way, the really popular songs (as decided by the users themselves) would inflate in price and the more obscure songs will lower in price, which could give them more exposure which may then raise the price back up.
This could work well if Apple would expose the system used to calculate the pricing and the stats for each track downloaded. It would make things interesting.
Let free-market rule!
Ignores the long tail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this could be their goal: to make iTunes less profitable and drive them out of business, then swoop in and offer a different service... Or maybe they want to make iTunes less profitible in order to drive music consumers back to purcashing CDs... ??? </conspiracy_theory>
Same old story (Score:5, Interesting)
They have found the sweet spot in the market and simply collect the checks. But the corprate mantra of constantly growing profits has taken over. Which is not a bad thing, but it should have manifested itself in the recruitment of new musicians, not the raising of prices for the hell of it. That of course, would take effort, and when you make more money off of an album than the artist does - after you have merely loaned them the money to make their next album - you get used to screwing people over as much as you can.
If banks worked like the music industry, you would pay 90% of your paycheck to whatever bank gave you a student loan 20 years ago - 15 years after they were paid off.
To be fair to us Americans (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:iTunes monopoly (Score:2, Interesting)
Frankly, no DRM is much better than any DRM... especially considering most DRM can be circumvented very easily. But I can see how not using DRM would be frightening for an independant artist. You're potentially giving away all your work, and you've got no income from albums, etc.
That said, is there no way to create your own Apple DRM'd songs? None at all? Do most independant artists rely on DRM, or are they more reliant on a small group of dedicated fans who will pay for the music to support the band?
Re:Yeah well (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, they'll be absolutely convinced the price is too low. How many morons downloaded the Crazy Frog ringtone at a significantly higher price than 99 cents? They want to go back to gouging the customers and giving kickbacks to corrupt legislators to take your house off you for petty copyright infringement.
Honestly, someone give me a google map for the RIAA headquarters. I've got my Illudium Q36 explosive space modulator somewhere around here and a strong urge to use it.
Re:great! (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of my favorite oldies are not available as singles but rather only the album -- usually $9.99. I have bought a couple of albums because it was still cheaper than buying a CD. As an example, American Pie by Don McLean. A great album of the early 70's (yeah, I'm old)
There are some other oldies I'd like to have but I won't pay for the album because the rest of the songs were garbage.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
"$0.99 a song is no longer possible due to the rampant greed from BMG,SONY and other record labels."
it works we do it all the time in the cable industry. Discovery tried to increase their rates to us and force us to carry some more of their crap channels.. we said no, they pulled our encryption key so we replaced discovery with a screen that said "discovery wants to raise your cable rates, we said no and rthey pulled the plug, call 888-888-8888 and tell them what you think."
we were down 5 days on that channel before they agreed to make the calls stop.
the record companies are making HUGE profits at the $0.99 pricing. they just wnat in on this price gouging that the oil companies are enjoying right now.
remember that they can track sales. (Score:5, Interesting)
Replace the 'hot new hits' smokescreen with 'anything that's actually popular' and you have what the music industry actually wants. Does 'Highway to Hell' get more action than the latest push-the-star album? No problem.. that song gets a price hike.
It leads to a state of smoke and mirrors, where all the songs that sell less than one copy a month are $.50, anything that actually has an audience is $.99, and anything getting more traffic than normal, for any reason, gets kicked up to $1.99. Even more heinous, but technically feasible, would be per-user and related-hits tracking, so if you buy a $.50 song, all the 'other songs purchased by people who bought this one' go up to $.99 for you personally. In such a system, the only way to get the low prices consistently would be to buy random selections of stuff nobody else wants.
It's a great dodge, from a marketing standpoint. The labels can come out and say that 99% of the music in the iTMS catalog is listed below $.99, while quietly failing to mention that 90% of the actual purchases were at $.99 or more. Then they can wring their hands and claim that those "few" premium-priced songs are the only place they make a profit, and that anyone who wants to take away that price tier is just a nasty mean corpse-raping villain.
Personally, I'm amused that the labels are willing to play chicken with a company that recently announced a major change in its hardware platform. Apple (or Steve Jobs) certainly has the nerve to tell one of the big labels to take a hike if necessary, and it's not like the market is just flooded with other venues where the labels can peddle their goods.
The game theory of the situation is interesting.. if all the labels bailed at once, it would hurt Apple a lot. But if only a few labels leave, the ones that stay will probably do better business, since they'll have less competition. The more labels that go, the better the advantages for the few that stay. So basically, all the labels are in a position where they want someone *else* to sacrifice profits and teach Apple a lesson, while they personally stick around and glean the benefits of both the smackdown and reduced competition. But nobody wants to be the hero who dies for the good of everyone else.
All told, I hope.. and expect.. that Apple will stick to its guns on simple, flat pricing.
Re:Include more indies (Score:5, Interesting)
That, and the trend for albums to contain 2-3 good songs (at most) and a load of filler crap. Why would anyone want to buy an album like that?
I heard an interview with Jay Kay of Jamiroquai talking about the way the trend towards downloading means fans are buying individual tracks at a time rather than whole albums, which is forcing them and other artists to spend more time on the "other" tracks on their albums to make sure they're up to scratch. If this is the case (more people downloading = higher quality music), then great! And if we can get it for less than $0.99 even better!
Let's hope it's really true and not just words...
Filler Crap (Score:3, Interesting)
Most the time it is just filler crap.
Personally, I want a low enough price per song so I can afford to get the less popular tracks. As it stands, I've downloaded one iTunes songs so that I san say I downloaded an iTunes song. As it stands, I am priced out of their fixed price model.
Re:Greed, greed, greed... (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I will be sticking with AllofMP3 (what ITunes should be - pay per mb and the ability to choose from a wide range of formats/bitrates) or failing that, P2P.
Re:It was only a matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)
(yes, i am totally shameless: http://www.meetgoodwin.com/ [meetgoodwin.com]
Re:great! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have bought a couple of albums because it was still cheaper than buying a CD. As an example, American Pie by Don McLean. A great album of the early 70's (yeah, I'm old)
Great! Really. Except that it should be in the public domain by now. Like most of the music I listen to these days. So you bought stuff. Great! Now watch me not pay for stuff that should be free decades ago.
It seems the **AAs are succesfully wiping the notion of a public domain from people minds.
Re:Great! (Score:2, Interesting)
The sad part is; there are some good artists out there that just happen to be a part of the whole RIAA machine and will therefore not get any of my money. Their loss.
Re:iTunes monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
iTunes
Music Match
MusicNet
Music Now
Audio Lunchbox
DownloadPunk
Downrip
Sony Connect
So, if you think iTunes is the only choice for independent labels, it's your own fault for not seeking alternatives. And no, iTunes is not the biggest seller for all of our labels.
That's EXACTLY the way they operate. (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporate culture also screws things up for artists with the enshrining of the artist as a 'bitch-god(ess)' with whom its never about what its explicitely about (or some such clap trap.) This way they can keep up the mystery around the industry.
Satch'mo never went for it and, being black, they never went for him, 'cause he was just a dope smokin' 'nigger' and would never amount to much. SURPRISE! His sheer talent snuck in under their radar, (not hard since they don't know talent unless it hits them in the back of the head with a 2x4,) and he survived the killer, rat & roach infested, high colesterol, pace of life he had to live in order to pay the rent.
But they still held all the recording contracts so they didn't care.
There are books, lots of books, written about how shabbily artists have been treated over the years. Its not just a shame; its a crime.
And the people committing the crimes are doing so systematically. The music publishing/recording industry __hates__ musicians.
Sad, isn't it?
Re:That's EXACTLY the way they operate. (Score:2, Interesting)
The recording industry doesn't know talent when it hits them in the back of the head with a 2x4. Maybe some sort of out-of-control bus, or high-powered rifle bullet...
Musicians, you have a choice. Either go with the recording industry, which might give you two years of nice living when you are not your own boss, and shat you out at the end of it with absolutely nothing to show for it. Not even the ability to sell your own music.
Or put a website and sell music online. Give away some tracks. Sing at clubs. You'll end up living on half of what the music industry loans you, but notice that word loan? That loan, called an advance, means you will never see a dime of money from your music.
But what about promotion and distribution and stuff? Sorry, bub, you have to pay for that. Or rather, it comes out of the money that you are increasingly unlikely to see a dime of.
Now, unless you're incredibly lucky or good, you won't make it 'big'.
However, if you fail outside the industry, you fail because people don't like the music, whereas if you fail inside the industry, you fail because the industry doesn't like you. And the industry likes exactly seven people at once, one that fits exactly one predefined market, and no more.
Whereas outside the industry, you can make an okay living with 'pretty good' music, and a great one with 'very good' music. If you do make it big outside the industry, and end up needing them, you can approach them on your terms. And if you don't make it big, you don't need them and don't want them, they'll just suck money from you.
Re:great! (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyrights are to be for a limitied time according to the constitution. The big rich content companies have purchased enough of our legislators to extend that time to almost eternal. The purpose of copyrights and patents was not primarily to make creators of content wealthy, but to help the entire country by it. The artists usually get the smallest part of the money that the consumers pay for the material, just as the farmer gets the least fraction of what you pay at the grocery store say for a loaf of bread.
Re:great! (Score:5, Interesting)
As you may or may not have noticed, I never said artists shouldn't get paid. However the point off copyright isn't that artists should be able to live indefinitely of whatever they create.
Copyright is a legal construct, an artificial monopoly which provides artists a incentive to create, which in turn was meant to benefit society by making society richer (ie the public domain).
Are you going to tell me that Beatles, Miles Davis or whoever weren't going to make that music anyway, if they knew that they would "only" be able to profit from it, say, 35 years? You got to be kidding. If I could strike any deal like that for anything I did, I'd sign up before you could say "showtime".
Had todays copyright regime existed in the time of Beethoven, Bach or Wagner we would have never heard about them at all, as they'd be copyrighted into oblivion. Now we can all enjoy them instead, as they belong to the public. As it should be.
Can you please tell me exactly what copyrighted material has entered the public domain since the creation of Mickey Mouse? Which incidently was based on Steamboat Willie, which incidently also was copyrighted, but happened to have entered the public domain.
Had it not been for the public domain, Disney would never have existed today, nor would your dear Mickey Mouse. Copyright is granted with the intent that the copyrighted material should in the end belong to society. It's simple. There's supposed to be a balance. Now there is not.
With the de-facto end of the public domain, watch me no longer respecting the artifical construct that copyright is.
you misunderestimate their greed & stupidity (Score:2, Interesting)
Not likely, for two reasons:
- Digital sales are still a drop in the overall music market.
- The greed of the record industry is only rivaled by their stupidity.
Here are some nice quotes to demonstrate #2:- The other main battleground in Apple's coming confrontation with the industry has to do with "interoperability" of services and devices. Mr. Jobs has so far refused to make the iTunes software compatible with music players from other manufacturers, and he has prevented the iPod from accepting music sold from competing services that use a Microsoft-designed music format...Hilary Rosen, the former chairwoman of the Recording Industry Association of America, agrees on that point. "If Apple opened up their standards, they would sell more, not less," she said. "If they open it up to having more flexibility with the iPod, I think they'd sell more iPods.
Apple already dominates online sales, so opening their format and their players are just going to lose them money. They make almost all their money on iPod sales, so they'd probably lose money if they increased their song downloads by 50% if it cost them even 5% of their iPod sales. And increasing prices, the way the record industry wants to do, is not going to increase sales.- Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony BMG, discussed the state of the overall digital market at a media and technology conference three months ago and said that Mr. Jobs "has got two revenue streams: one from our music and one from the sale of his iPods." "I've got one revenue stream," Mr. Lack said, joking that it would require a medical professional to locate. "It's not pretty."
Excuse me? You pay for nothing in disutribution costs, pay for no part of running the store, get 70% of every sale as pure profit, and this "doesn't look pretty"? You fucking whore, Mr. Lack.The record industry has seen that online sales do pay off, but now their letting their instiable greed get in the way of basic common sense, and even good business sense. If Jobs tells them to screw off, they're very likely to say "okay", and proceed to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
If it's not in iTunes, it doesn't exist to me (Score:2, Interesting)
I've stopped shopping at brick and mortar shops entirely for music, and the comment holds true for me. The other problem with CDs now is many are getting copy protection schemes that are far more troublesome (ie: Sony). With CDs it's becoming a crapshoot, at least with iTunes I know what I'm getting, my restrictions, and a way to get around them if needed.
If a major music company leaves because of their pricing greed, they'll soon realize they have nowhere reasonable to peddle their goods online, especially as more and more customers start purchasing music online.
This doesn't make sense . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:AllOfMp3 (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm [museekster.com]
http://www.fadmine.com/allofmp3-legal-cheap-mp3s.
From the above pages:
"Actually, in terms of the law in the U.S., this is rather interesting. You are, in this case, importing legal songs (importing since it's Russian based). Now, just because this service is illegal in the USA, that does not mean that using it is illegal. Why? MP3's, OGG's, etc are not illegal in the USA and therefore can be imported. There is also no law against importing music from other countries (including Russia). And because you are buying this legally in Russia and then importing to the USA, this should be 100% legit. For example, assuming that Russian Vodka is illegal to buy in the USA on Sunday, but you buy the Russian Vodka in Moscow on Sunday, then you import it into the USA, you have done nothing wrong. Again, this assumes that 1) it is illegal to buy Russian Vodka on Sunday in the USA 2) it is legal in Moscow and 3) it is legal to import Russian Vodka."
Apple favors the Labels... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tracks on itunes from a major label can be browsed by genre, but indies aren't. The only way an indie track comes up is if you search it by name. ITMS has other positioning-perks for labels too, and these count for a LOT when you're competing for cyberspace. I don't think the perks would exist unless Jobs wanted to curry the labels' favor.