Jobs to Labels- Lose the DRM & We'll Talk Price 459
eldavojohn writes "Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been talking smack about DRM and has recently issued a verbal offer to major music lables stating that if they are willing to lose the DRM, he'd be willing to raise his 99 cent price for those iTunes songs. These tracks (such as the recent EMI deal) would also have better sound quality & cost about 30 cents more."
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
No DRM + higher quality audio = possibly worth a 30% increase in price
Loose? (Score:3, Insightful)
loose? I don't normally point out spelling or grammar errors in comments, but come on, this is the article summary. Isn't an editor supposed to at least read these?
As for the rest of this, is this supposed to be something new? He already made statements that said he'd offer all comers the same deal as EMI. I'm pretty sure the price was implied to be part of that deal.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're giving you something you do want at a (higher) price they think it's worth. The lower price you never paid for something you didn't want is irrelevant.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:0, Insightful)
Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate monopolies, personally, but in this case it takes Apple's virtual monopoly in this space to fight the other monopolies (I know they are really a group of companies controlling everything, but you understand what I'm saying) in the media space. So I'll stand next to Apple on this one; for the time being.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Raise it from 99 cents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet CDs, which are DRM free, have the highest quality audio and will cost about the same, offer a physical medium, and packaging as opposed to what will be available online.
Here are some figures (Score:3, Insightful)
Jobs is just using the store to promote his iPod and always has. He gets little profits from music sales. If you want music to cost less, break the RIAA first. That's your only choice.
Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Loose? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, loose is still correct in this case. From m-w.com:
Main Entry: loose
...
Function: verb
5 : to make less rigid, tight, or strict : RELAX
The answer is obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
ringtones anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
These songs will sell fine.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
The physical medium is pretty worthless to me. Maybe even negative value since they create more waste and pollution than an additional file download does.
There are occasions where the packaging is nice, but not very often for me. Most of it's just sitting in the garbage or in a drawer where I'd tossed all my CD cases. How much more would you be willing to pay on every CD for the inserts and such? 50 cents? $1.50?
Sounds great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because pricing has nothing to do with production costs. Record companies don't exist to make $X profit per album -- they exist to maximize $X.
Soundbite society (Score:5, Insightful)
OF COURSE some CDs have DRM. MOST DON'T. This in contrast to the subject at hand, being songs downloaded from iTunes, which practically all DO have DRM.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
to my knowledge, there are no real audio CDs with DRM.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
You want the word "monopsony" rather than "monopoly", in the sense you used it (a single buyer, or in this case broker, exerting pressure on sellers).
Re:Still a cheaper option. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to break the law anyway, why not save $.50 to $1.00 and borrow the CD or download it from P2pServiceOfYourChoiceSter?
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:2, Insightful)
Once the Labels have given in, it would be *very* difficult to get apple to agree to go back to all DRM-ridden music.
I can *just* start to hear the feint sounds of the foundation crumbling out from underneath the DRM fortress....
Re:Raise it from 99 cents? (Score:3, Insightful)
(For the record, I've spend $15 so far this year, and that was for a physical two-CD compilation that also came with all the band's music videos on a dual DVD. I also "bought" one free CD download at Magnatune using a gift card they handed out at SXSW.)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most recording studios these days use, at the very least, 24bit audio at between 96-196+ khz. While I agree with you that most people won't hear a difference, audiophiles will hear a difference. My mother can't tell the difference between a hissy cassette tape and a CD, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.
The interesting point here is that online music sales could potentially supply consumers with higher quality audio than currently is available with CD. Changing the way CD's play audio would take years. Whereas many people already have good quality sound cards capable of delivering higher quality audio.
The obstacle is obviously file sharing. People sharing sub-CD quality audio is one thing, having them sharing studio-master audio is a completely different thing.
Jobs is playing the PR game, trying to unalign Apple from DRM. That said, any move away from DRM, PR motivated or not, is to be lauded.
Re:A/V heading in opposite directions? (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't seen much improvement in book tech over the last 100 years, and those improvements have been incremental. The same thing is happening to audio and video; once you've made things as nice as people can perceive, there isn't much more to be done.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's iPod and iTunes both handle two INDUSTRY standards for encoding, and ONE proprietary DRM feature, a DRM feature they (via Jobs) are trying to remove.
I never got the gripe of you Anti-Apple whiners. Go, use Rio, or Zune, or whatever else is out there for playing MP3s and WMA (proprietary format) nobody is holding a gun to your head. Go, Use allofMP3 and any other source for Downloading Music. Hopefully you don't have to be a technical genius to get it all to work right, because if you do, then you're obviously missing the point of iTunes, iPod, iTMS and the whole integration thing. It Just Works (TM).
I gave my wife an iPod last year for her birthday, she didn't even know what it was! The she picked up and used it, and started Ripping her CDs to the iPod right away. It just works for her, and it is "easy" for her. Which is the whole point, isn't it? Point Click Rip Sync.
We got it hooked into the car, the iHome in the kitchen, the Main Whole House Stereo system, because "It Just Works(TM)".
If you want to call that a Monopoly, fine, go ahead. I call it building a better mousetrap, and Apple has done a great job in making a Music Player Experience that is pleasant. Sorry if it doesn't support Ogg or Linux or whatever else you think it ought to. It does support MP3 and ACC, both open formats, and can rip, burn CDs quickly and easily, and support from many third party add-ons, and works both on Mac and Windows.
So, I don't know what the beef is all about. It isn't the monopoly you think it is.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jobs, where are Disney's DRM-free movies? (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of months ago when he published his DRM views, it was "yeah, right. Until you start selling DRM-free tunes on iTunes, you have no credibility." Now, it's "gimme DRM-free Video from a public company where you're a tiny (a few percent) shareholder, NOW!"
What the hell is it with you people? He's used his influence and control (which everybody constantly complains about) to engineer the largest single rollback of existing DRM in history - can you see Bill Gates doing that? Cut him some fucking slack.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Buying/ripping CDs is starting to look like a good idea again.
It never stopped being a good idea, imho.
Many point out these advantages:
But these miss the biggest advantage of all, imho: Backup.
Yup, hard drives die. What happens when yours dies with all your MP3s (oggs, whatever) on it? You've got it all backed up - right? Well, I sure as hell haven't made a backup. I've got 80, 90 gig of music and a DVD burner that won't burn working DVDs - so that's 150-odd CD-Rs I'd have to sit there burning.
If you buy an albums' worth of music on CD, then rip, you get MP3s, and your CD goes on the shelf as a physical backup. Buy an albums' worth of music on MP3, if you want the physical backup you have to burn one. Well, do you burn CDRs every time you buy mp3s? Really? And even if you, consider:
Just my opinion of course. I'm not telling anyone what format to buy in - I see plenty of people come up with well argued reasons why MP3 suits them better, fair enough. I buy MP3s too, occasionally. When there's only one or two tracks on a CD that I want, then obviously it makes much more sense. This doesn't happen that often, though, simply because I mostly prefer artists who are capable of putting out albums that aren't 80% crap! In these situations, iTunes would need to be DRM-free, 256kbps, track for £0.50 / album for £5 or less* to be remotely attractive competition for CDs, in my eyes.
(* I realise that $0.99 / $9.99 is less than £0.50 / £5 at the moment, but we get the usual $=£ stitch up with iTunes.)
Re:A/V heading in opposite directions? (Score:2, Insightful)
(It may also be that the broad market understands how to judge what features deliver what degree of portability and convenience better than they understand how to judge what features deliver what degree of quality. If that's the case, typical consumers may then give up on better audio fidelity, or make purchases that they inaccurately perceive as delivering better audio fidelity).
Re:Soundbite society (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Can we also get a +1 ironic sig moderation?
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
Recording studios don't do 24bit 196kHz because they "hear a difference". They do it for the same purpose that Photoshop (for ex.) supports 48-bit images: when you're going to edit this material (filter, change dynamics, amplify, process, speed up/down, remix etc etc), you need extra precision, since from all the twisting and processing, deffects on a 44khz/16-bit piece start to show much sooner than with 24-bit 196kHz.
For studios, the flexibility to tweak the material endlessly without perceptible loss is important, since recording in a proper isolated room with all the proper technicians, musicians, singers, equipment, isn't cheap (cheaper than before, but not cheap).
Audophiles are in the majority losers who can be convinced that 900kHz sounds much better than 800kHz, even if you actually played the same thing to them, but with two different labels. Quality at those levels is subjective, and people's senses are unwillingly manipulated by what they're told.
It's basically the same reason why some people admire paintings like this one [donnabellas.com]. they don't all pretend they understand/like it.
Some are convinced they see something incredible, maybe the author is also convinced he thought of something incredible, thing is, I can put my 5 year old kid and it'll draw the same in 2 minutes and they won't be able to tell the difference and admire just the same.
Free markets people, it's not rocketscience (Score:5, Insightful)
When labels open up and start making their catalogs available in non-DRM versions, the barrier of entry to the business will drop significantly, since a music store will no longer need to own a hardwareplatform and maintain a quirky DRM system. This will create more actors on the marketplace, and the price will drop. At first the price will be $1.29, but soon someplace will come along and sell the tracks at $1.20, maybe even $.99. That will force Apple to match this, and in turn, there will be pressure on the labels to lower thier prices.
Jobs doesn't mind that - because he know that he owns the Walmart of musicplayers. Your one stop shop for anything that makes a sound. Therefore he will get the volume, everybody else will just be the long tail. It's much easier for him to be in the front of non-drm music, than to play catch-up after some bored european "consumer"(*)-organisations forces non-drm.
(*) They're all government-run, so it's not like consumers get to decide how, when or if they will be represented.
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, not sure I can explain it to you in a way that you can understand. But heck, let me try, in baby terms you might understand.
Okay there is this Sandbox, made by SoftyMicro and there are a whole bunch of toys one can play with in the sandbox. Except that SoftyMicro has made the sandbox in such a way that it's own toys compete with all the other sandbox toys, and those other toys sometimes don't work right because SoftyMicro keeps changing the configuration of the sandbox. Then there was the case where SoftyMicro didn't actually have this certain kind of toy that Sandscape was making for the sandbox. After a while, it figured out that the Sandscape toy was a "threat" to all the other toys, and even the sandbox itself, and decided to compete with Sandscape's toy, and give the toy away to ANYONE buying the sandbox.
Now the Sandscape company is only an example of this philosophy, and there are many other toys that SoftyMicro makes that it gives away so that others, even though they aren't really part of the sandbox.
Along comes this company Peaches that has built this neat little toy called tToy, that plays in the sandbox, and even works on Peaches own Monkey Bars play area. This toy just is fun to play with, and has all sorts of interesting options and configurations. Additionally, some of those options are only available from Peaches tToyStore, but also has accessories and options available from many other places.
There are also other toys very similar to Peaches tToy, some are less expensive, have some more features, but not nearly the same playing experience that tToy has.
Now there is a group of kids who don't like the sandbox (too sandy), nor the Monkey Bars, and they play on the Swings. They complain about tToys "monopoly" (not related to the board game) because tToy and all the options are hard to get working while playing on the swings.
Can you see the difference now?
Re:Loose? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more serious note, track-by-track purchases are a good thing for the music market. Bands who fill their discs with junk and rely on their hit single to sell records will no longer be able to get away with it. I think that means we'll see some talented acts picking up the spotlight instead of the industry-created fluff of recent years. I just hope that artists don't abandon the idea of the album as a cohesive whole - when you're in the mood for something a little deeper than top 40, nothing beats putting on a well-executed musical journey from one of your favorite bands.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
First, there is EMI's point of view: They don't want to sell their music without DRM for the same price as with DRM. I bet it was difficult enough to convince their management to sell DRM free music downloads at all, no way to do it for the same price.
So what is Apple to do in this situation? They were not willing to lose money on selling music without DRM (there is not much profit per song right now; with the increased wholesale price for music without DRM Apple would have lost money at $0.99 per song). If they sold the same product with DRM for $0.99 and without DRM for more, there would be an outcry, and rightfully so. So they had no choice but to improve the product in some other way to justify the price increase.
The better quality gives Apple a justification for the price increase. On the other hand, it is a genuine improvement. On the third hand, it might be possible that Apple makes more profit from $1.29 without DRM than with 0.99 with DRM. On the fourth hand, making money is what public companies are supposed to do.
I don't think price and copying are too strongly related. Could be the opposite: High price indicates high value which means copying it is really bad. Low price would mean low value; not worth buying, so it gets copied. It is all a complicated relationship between law, ethics, purchase power and psychology. I personally think there will be more EMI music sold and more EMI music copied, with everyone being better off in the end.
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've never heard such an extreme take on it outside of *AA reps. If you own the disk, you can sell the disk. It has the distinct difference from burning a copy and selling it that if I sell a legally purchased copy, I then no longer have it. The original producer has sold one copy, been paid for one copy, and no additional copies exist, so the copyright is not violated.
Second hand sales are not stealing anything, sales, ideas, opportunities, profits or anything else. This is how it works: once you sell something, you no longer get to control it. See, simple isn't it?
Re:Are consumers that dumb? (Score:2, Insightful)