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Music Media

MTV Getting into Music Download Business 286

Posted by CmdrTaco from the getting-crowded-in-here dept.
Pranjal writes "According to this article at Economic Times, MTV is getting into the music download business. MTV chief Tom Freston announced on Monday, the service would debut within the first half of next year. Looks like the online music download business is heating up."
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MTV Getting into Music Download Business More

MTV Getting into Music Download Business

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  • seeing how this is MTV, this really should be:

    "from the getting-crowded-in-her r e dept."

    Mike

    • MTV - Here is a clue (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @01:07PM (#7387404) Journal
      There are a zillion places to download music in MP3 (or whatever) form, iTunes being legal to boot.

      That niche is being served.

      MTV didn't get to where it got by playing music, they got to where they are by playing MUSIC VIDEOS. So put all the videos (particularly the old school stuff) up for purchase as downloads and use a decent codec that doesn't require a spyware laced install on the client.

      Damn, I should patent that.

      We already have MP3s. Sell us MPGs of the music videos.

      This clue brought to you by the number 4 and the letter V.

  • Pity the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SMOC ( 703423 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:31AM (#7385978)
    I really do feel bad for the RIAA members (not the RIAA itself). They are stuck having to eventually face the fact that they are 80% of the way to extinction. Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?

    Yes, storing it in a way that does not rot too fast or get deleted for video game space is valuable, but I see the future retailers of music being the clubs that host musicians. They should strike a deal with the performers that they host to sell the music via a Web site and via a kiosk at the show.

    Here's one business model for that:

    Club makes USB-fobs that contain the customer's name, credit info (or a key that they look up the credit info in their database with) and email address. The customer goes to a show and likes it, so they walk over to the kiosk and plug in their fob to order the "album" on the way out. The kiosk notes the purchase in the database and sends email to the customer with a link to download the music from the Web site.

    Quick, easy, and here's the best part: you don't care about file-swappers because you get the customer at the exact point where they decide they like the music. You don't care if the 5 billion people who never come to your club swap this music around. What you care about is that your club (and the artist who gets a cut) made some extra money from a customer. You win, they win and the band wins.

    But, I still feel bad for the labels who are doomed because they can't make a "star" anymore out of some semi-talented performer who they can stick on MTV. Or more to the point, they can make the star, but there's soon going to be no point in terms of selling CDs.

    • Re:Pity the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:47AM (#7386156)
      Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?

      Electronic transmission of text has been easilly available for several decades now, yet people still buy stacks of paper with words printed on them.

      As long as owning an album one a removable storage media means actually owning that copy, people like me will pay for it when the music is good enough to be worth buying.

      • Re:Pity the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:55AM (#7386224) Homepage Journal
        There's a major difference between music and text, however - people greatly prefer reading newspapers or books because of portability, legibility, etc. By comparison, there is little or no difference between listening to a music CD and music stored in some other medium like a HD or Flash card. Once they resolve the licensing issues this will become a no-brainer. It sounds like iTunes is making good progress on that front...

      • Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?

        Electronic transmission of text has been easilly available for several decades now, yet people still buy stacks of paper with words printed on them.

        Music has been distributed on changing media for about a 100 years, before that it was live or sheet music.

        Words have been distributed on changing media for 5000 years, and on stacks of paper fo what, a thousand, two thousand? I'

      • Re:Pity the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @12:05PM (#7386905)
        Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?
        Electronic transmission of text has been easilly available for several decades now, yet people still buy stacks of paper with words printed on them.
        Is that a good example? 100 years ago newspaper WAS the media - the papers were to be feared. The movie "Citizen Kane" is about a newspaper baron. Today there is hardly such thing as a "newspaper baron," the business is hardly hip or profitable. This not where the music industry wants to go!

        Anyways, just look how the napster craze hit music... not books, or music, or anything else. Even if we can't agree on an explanation for that, music is obviously in a uniquely vulnerable position.

        • Hey mate, ever heard the name Murdoc ?
          I think this guy is trying to get a worldwide presence and is already on 3-4 continents.

          I guess Newspaper Baron is one of his lesser titles, among "TV King", "Radio Magna" and "Weekly Press Emperor", so it's natural you didn't remind him...

          also, he got a few friends playing the same level, but I'm too lazy to open the Financial Times.
      • It's funny that you think you own that copy. You've liceowned it. All the bad parts of ownership, combined with all the bad parts of licensing.

        What's funny to me is that DRM on digital music is supposed to be so limiting, but in reality, it's no different than the legal quagmire that is the CD you "own".
        • It's funny that you think you own that copy. You've liceowned it. All the bad parts of ownership, combined with all the bad parts of licensing. What's funny to me is that DRM on digital music is supposed to be so limiting, but in reality, it's no different than the legal quagmire that is the CD you "own".

          Wrong. When you buy a CD you own it outright, you aren't licensing a thing. You do not, however, own the copyright and so you are forbidden by law to make unauthorized copies. When you buy DRM cripp



    • Cool idea, but I'm sure that someone already has a patent from 1980 on "Delivering music content at a live event to a small device"

  • Better late than never. (Score:3, Funny)

    by greyrax ( 544575 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:31AM (#7385979)
    No, wait. Better never in this case.
  • Somebody should sell them a Clue(TM). The ball has started to roll (with iTunes and Napster 2.0) and all they do is bitch!
    • Yeah, you know, because they aren't making any money from these services.

      Do you want to be a Clue(tm)?
    • They are not far away. Is is suprising that the most popular formats MP3 and Ogg are not supported? If it was a true business that listened to it's consumers, they would realise there is a huge market for high quality product. Their presense is why it's mostly DRM incompatible with anything I use to play music. Good business would be to sell to the industry standards. If I sold videos the way the RIAA forces music to be incompatible with most of the market, it would be the same as selling PAL Betamax v
      • MP3 and Ogg the most popular formats? You're either smoking crack or living in a dream world. I'll give you MP3 as the most popular format by far. But I would make a guess that the second most popular format is WMA and the third AAC. WMA is the codec that windows media player rips things to by default, how many people out there are ripping like that? Many more than use OGG. Plus most ever portable player supports WMA and MP3 and many convert everything to WMA first.

  • MTV and music? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mckeowbc ( 513776 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:31AM (#7385993) Homepage
    I thought they only showed crappy shows like "Made" and "Road Rules". Since when has MTV been about music?
    • This reminds me of a great Lewis Black joke...

      "MTV is to music what KFC is to chicken."

      So true.
    • I thought they only showed crappy shows like "Made" and "Road Rules". Since when has MTV been about music?

      Consider yourself lucky. The only "Music" I've seen on MTV lately has been Rap Crap, Metal with crap Rap screaming, or the latest Britney clone singing the latest version of her "Baby Baby Baby" song. Let's see, then there are the bands made up of 3 identical girls singing more "Baby Baby Baby" songs. And then there are the generic rappers in oversize basketball shirts and big gold rings singing "Ba

    • Waaaaaay back in the last millenium, when I was young, you could turn to MTV any time of day and see music videos. Ah, those were the good ol' days.

  • MTV and Launch (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AssFace ( 118098 )
    I always thought that MTV would get involved more with Launch.com - or in a buyout. Granted, Yahoo bought them out (Launch), but there was plenty of time beforehand.

    Between the videos and the radio that they have, it seems like a good spot to them say "want to buy this song/album? click here"

  • Video etc (Score:5, Interesting)

    by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:34AM (#7386026) Homepage Journal
    Music download is all well and good, but I wish this new stack of legit music download services would offer me the video of these songs (if available).

    Some bands, Beasti Boys, Super Furries and Moloko jump to mind, really put some effort into their videos. MTV would be well placed to offer this as a USP for a while, probably having better deals and leverage than anyone in that area.

    Charge me more or throw it in as an incentive I dont mind - just give me the option!
    • They pretty much already do that at MTV. Most TRL videos are online. I do agree with you though:. Just as Apple has the iPod, and dell has (cough cough) their iPod clone for their service, maybe MTV should have this. [amazon.com] (The RCA Lyra Video/Mp3 jukebox)

      Read my journal entry from yesterday on my Apple perspective about this story:

      http://slashdot.org/~adzoox/journal/51035

    • Re:Video etc (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:43AM (#7386127) Homepage Journal
      MTV dropped the ball big time and they should have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Apple released iTMS. Besides, I spent some time watching MTV a couple weeks ago and all the music they were playing was "do me baby rap" and commercials. I remember when MTV first started out when they billed themselves as 24 hour commercial free music. Nah, MTV has lost this game. Apple is ideally situated to provide just this sort of music video service. They already have the infrastructure in place to deliver movie previews (and have had for some time), and have been interested in expanding the content available to folks who are interested in downloading music with album covers etc....

      The other thing I would like access to with the music is lyrics, liner notes etc... My guess is that all of this is coming.

      • All the music videos moved to VH1 Classic and a few others.

        Now if VH-1 Classic offered an online video download service(that I can save & replay anytime I want, in a non-proprietary format), I would get that in a heartbeat. Imagine being able to get all the videos from $OBSCURE-NEW-WAVE-BAND.

        Cheap
        Non-proprietary
        Wide selection

        Pick 2.
      • Actually, iTunes does offer videos. Currently they are only 'Artist exclusives', but the last time I checked both R.E.M. and Bob Dylan each had one - just go to an artist's page to check. There are definitely others.

        I don't know how likely it is for them to offer more in the future, whether Quicktime streaming or individual. Video licensing is at least as complicated as music licensing, and probably more difficult. Though if others have done it, than Apple probably could as well if they put their min

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:44AM (#7386138)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This just in: MTV sucks more soul from humanity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:37AM (#7386057) Homepage Journal
    Well I thought they might've been slacking since they are only starting up a magazine (print) and selling mp3 players (electronics) after already cornering the market on useless musical merchandise. Even an ex-Road Rules contestant and ex-FOX News reporter is lead on that new morning show, Cold Pizza, on ESPN2. They are seriously becoming an omni-brand intent on a flat-entertainment experience.

    Not like most people would notice any difference...

  • The MTV Effect (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FrankNputer ( 141316 )
    Oh, great - so now instead of worrying about how my MP3s will sound I have to worry about how they look too??

    • Re:MP3s will sound (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Technician ( 215283 )
      Am I missing something? I haven't seen any indication they would offer MP3's. Let me know where you got the info. I've been looking for MP3's. I can't play WMA9 DRM stuff in my car MP3 player. My car also can't play any streaming format.

      If they are offering a useful format, please reply to this post!

  • Can you say market dilution? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:37AM (#7386059) Journal
    Witness the fad of the 2000's - online music services.

    You know which one will survive? The one the RIAA sets up for themselves.
    • hehe, they don't need to set one up. Since they hold all the rights, they can use them as strings on the puppets to keep the services in line.

      RIAA: What?!? You are thinking about lowering that price to $.50 to compete? No more licenses for you. (to be more precise, your fee is now $.51 per song).

  • The article's *really* light on specifics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattbot 5000 ( 645961 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:37AM (#7386060) Homepage
    I learned two things:

    - MTV's music download service will "compete with iTunes and everyone else"

    AND

    - "MTV will also be competing with a relaunched Napster and recently launched BuyMusic.com"

    Wait, make that three things: there's no way to get back the five minutes I spent reading that article.

  • The more the merrier... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trix_e ( 202696 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:39AM (#7386076)
    It'll be interesting to see how long it is before music download services become completely commoditized. They're already dangerously close to that now. The 'goods' they sell are roughly equivalent between services, the breadth of selection, and the restrictiveness of the DRM being the two areas of differentiation I can see.

    Don't know how much the RIAA will let these guys loosen up the DRM, and the catalogs look pretty equivalent and will become increasingly so IMO, so all that's left is price.

    I'm guessing Amazon will jump in soon as well. They've got the traffic to drive sales, all other things being equal.

    It'll be interesting to see where the cost per song/album comes out. iTunes is promoting an upcoming promotion (don't think about that too much) with Pepsi, where some of the prizes are iTunes downloads. I don't know the specifics, but that certainly looks like it holds promise -- advertising subsidized downloads.

    • Re:The more the merrier... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thryllkill ( 52874 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:01AM (#7386272) Homepage Journal
      I am not so interested in how things turn out as long as two things remain the same. Emusic.com sticks to a flat $9.99 a month fee providing me with a large selection of indie music (their selection has gotten a little "lighter" recently e.g. where are all the F.Y.P. records they used to have?) and IRC trading stays strong.

      emusic is the best example of legal audio downloads. I don't pay something silly like $0.99 a song. I pay 10 bucks a month, and have unlimited downloads. Yes I don't get the new NSync albums and stuff, but I do get access to an ever expanding catalogue of independent music, which IMHO is better than most pop dreck.

      Also (I believe, I haven't read my user agreement recently, and those things do change) there are no restrictions on the mp3s I download. No direct to cd burning. If I want to make a ton of mix cds with the tracks I get, go me. Scratch one up? Burn it again. If you download just one cd a month, you still save 5-10 bucks. I download several a week, so I have saved a ton of money, found bands I would have never gotten a chance to listen to (most of which you can't even find on Kazaa) and most importantly, my 10 bucks is not getting into Metallica or Dr Dre's pockets (or whoever has their panties in a twist about mp3s this week).


      No I do not work for Emusic, and if stuff like emusic and kazaa (k-lite, which ever doesn't have all the spyware) ever get shut down, well, I'll go back to IRC and see how they are doing.

      • Better check your mailbox mate, emusic changed into exactly a .99 a song service. It was great while it lasted though...
        • Are you sure? I use Emusic and it's (or will be on 11/8) $10 for 40 songs per month. That's $0.25 a song, which is a damn good deal.
      • It's nice that you're idealistically hanging onto a service without major label artists and with a subscription model that's basically been shown to be unattractive to most listeners.

        The traits that made iTunes stand out, though, were largely the price-per-song model and the fact that Jobs got the various labels on board for fairly innocuous DRM in the files. It was exactly the contrast with services like eMusic that made iTunes' store work. Ask anyone. It wasn't the interface -- the store's basically a n

    • With some many vendors going to offer a download service there is going to have to be a standard license agreement set by the industry. Imagine the hassle with the current systems in place. Some allow X number of burns copied to Y systems. Some don't let you burn, some only offer Z format. (X,Y and Z are variable.)

      I'm not sure why the RIAA and Labels are being so anal with some companies and not with others.

  • But wait a minute... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GTRacer ( 234395 ) <gtracer308@nOsPAm.yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:39AM (#7386082) Homepage Journal
    Won't the service only be available from about 11pm to 10am? Since the rest of the time the only downloads will be Real World/Road Rules and "Real Life - I'm a Hacker" eps...

    GTRacer
    - Commercial entertainment quality is teh suck.

  • Had to take that stab at em, mod as need be. :)

    Wondered when they would start to offer this service, and along with previous posters I am wondering when they will offer the music videos as well and really offer some content (Aside from Troll subject). Wait a minute...I think a faltering .com's business model has patented that already. (Again mod as needed)

  • Please MTV please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by L-s-L69 ( 700599 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:43AM (#7386124)
    1. Have mp3s to download not wma rubbish
    2. Be cheap
    3. Let people in the UK use it please!
    4. Have a mix
    5. Dont just market it at helpless teeny boppers
    6. Please, pretty please

    • ROFL! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:04AM (#7386287) Homepage
      "5. Dont just market it at helpless teeny boppers"

      Wait...did you just ask for MTV to NOT pander to helpless teeny boppers? Dude, that's their market!

    • "2. Be cheap"

      If you don't consider Apple's $.99 per song cheap, I think you need to re-evaluate your expectations. In case you haven't noticed, you can't get a candy bar for a nickel anymore either.

      • Re:Please MTV please (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cens0r ( 655208 )
        It may be cheap, but it's about the same cost to me to buy an album in a store, where I get much more for my money. For me to be interested in paying to download you need to give me a substantial discount over the store.

      • Candy Bar vs MP3 (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LPetrazickis ( 557952 )
        Paying for a candy bar covers:
        a) the recipe
        b) ingredients
        c) packaging
        d) shipping and handling
        e) display
        f) cashier's salary

        Paying for an mp3 covers:
        a) the recipe
        b) bandwidth (a cent at most)

        Yes, ninety-nine cents for a copy of a work of art is a total ripoff that's not justified by anything. Also, the fact that the recent Canadian music service used $.99 CAD (about $.75 USD) for the same imaginary product should be a dead give away that the price has nothing to do with their actual costs.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I smell (Score:5, Funny)

    by jlechem ( 613317 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:43AM (#7386125) Homepage Journal

    another .com bust in the making.

    Threadkilling since 1992

    • That was what I was going to say, but I knew if I kept reading I'd find someone else saying it because it's just too obvious.
      Perhaps I'll be proven all wrong, but watching the markets over the last few months it seems a bit odd how there's all these sudden rushes where the Dow jumps a hundred points in the first few minutes of every other few trading days and just languishes or slightly drops most of the rest of the time. It sure seems like there's a big concerted push to get past that Dow10K point bef

  • Obvious question... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BubbaTheBarbarian ( 316027 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:50AM (#7386179) Journal
    How long before all the music is gone and replace with divx formatted recordings of psudo-reality show?

  • Oh goody! MTV blazes new frontiers!!! :( (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobertAG ( 176761 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:52AM (#7386193)
    Considering MTV's track record with music videos, I shudder to think at what they could be offering:

    1. Waves and Waves of boy bands and Britney/Christina clones.

    2. Non-stop product endorsements embedded in MP3s and video downloads.

    3. Downloadable versions of Real World and other "reality" shows.

    4. "Special" IM clients that ensure a "safe" environment for children (no perverts, etc) while allowing only "approved" advertizing to float by the screen. Note: This software will automatically monitor you computer to make sure your "children" don't "accidentally" download copywrited material. Anything not digitally signed will be automatically deleted "for your own good."

    My inlaw's computer is a cesspool of Ad/Spy ware caused by the various crap their 16 year old daughter's downloaded over the past two years. I routinely have to uninstall garbage that she installs just to get past annoying popups.

    • My inlaw's computer is a cesspool of Ad/Spy ware caused by the various crap their 16 year old daughter's downloaded over the past two years. I routinely have to uninstall garbage that she installs just to get past annoying popups.

      With all due respect to your family, as well as your personal preferences, this is exactly why I insist on keeping a Mac in my house for my family to use. Multiple accounts under OS X, practically virus-free, they can't install applications outside their own home folder, and I ca

  • It will never fly... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot AT stango DOT org> on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:09AM (#7386333) Homepage Journal
    Here's why: the iPod.

    The iPod has serious street cred (and market share) amongst MTV-watching teens. For MTV to make their service acceptable to the record companies, it will have to have ham-handed, crippling DRM. For MTV to make their service successful, they'll have to make it work with the iPod, arguably the most popular/cool MP3 player amongst their viewers (I mean, OMG, 50 Cent had one in his video!!!)

    Without both sides of that above equation in place, the service will be a failure right out of the gate. And with the iTMS now available for Windows, it's not in Apple's interest to assist a third-party music service by making the iPod work with it. People will have a more seamless experience with their iPods if they just stick with the iTMS, and Apple will make a few more bucks out of it that way.

    So, the MTV online music service is analogous to a racehorse that drops dead while being walked to the starting gate.

    ~Philly
    • I mean, OMG, 50 Cent had one in his video!!!

      Interesting you mention that and the "street cred". Good point. I also remember seeing Jenniger Lopez, or "J-Lo(TM)", listening to an iPod in her Jenny From The Bronx video.

      Any other major (sic) "artists", anyone see with an iPod in a video?

      And yeah, 50 Cent gave the iPod major video time, and close zoom-ups too. Very kewl.

    • For MTV to make their service acceptable to the record companies, it will have to have ham-handed, crippling DRM.

      Or the same DRM that iTMS has. It seems to me that none of the online record stores have DRM much different then apple's. The only difference is on streaming music which iTMS doesn't provide. Other than that it's just a difference between DRM'd WMA versus DRM'd AAC. And WMA is supported by more portable players.

  • RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jonathan Platt ( 670802 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:15AM (#7386377)
    I don't know why everyone thinks this is a victory against the RIAA. Really this is a victory for them as well. They are there to support the recording industry, so that they have the ability to charge for the property they so rightfully own. It really doesn't matter how.

    RIAA has supported this idea from the start, but as so many of you selectively note the RIAA is not a company. They can not start there own venture, only attempt to stop illegal ones; which is why they should and will continue to shutdown illegal P2P activity.

    Due to the lower price of distribution, imports, exports, tariffs etc. this method of providing music should stop the whiners, because now they have access to music at an affordable price, and should have no need for illegal P2P.

    So everyone wins. Well everyone who isn't solely driven by greed at least, and will continue to use the substandard illegal P2P programs.
    • I don't know why everyone thinks this is a victory against the RIAA.

      My take would be that the RIAA no longer controls the official (non-p2p) presentation of music to end consumers. The RIAA has lost the gate. Now it's Apple who will be deciding what inducers and superlatives and featured artists get splashed across the showroom floors.

      • Not necessairly. Apple probably signed the same sort of deals with the labels that most record stores sign. They are required to give "shelf space" to certain artists, and advertise certain releases. Also, a sizeable chunk of money goes back to the RIAA and the RIAA can probably end the contract if they see fit.
  • been at least a decade or so. unless you count the videos shown during beavis and butthead.
  • 1. Litigate the Free music trading services into the dust, regardless of legality of content traded on the services.

    2. Introduce your own music trading services, except this time you make people pay for any content (even if the artists elect to distribute their music for free, like MP3.com).

    3. Profit!
  • The general public can either pay to listen to recorded music or get it free. Musicians can either make nothing from recordings, like they did all the centuries before the recording industry, or they can make nothing from recordings like they did DURING the century of the recording industry. Remember the basic truth that what musicians get from the distribution of recordings is EXPOSURE. They can get the same exposure and make the same amount of money by letting recordings be distributed FREE.

    Live performa
  • ...

    There is a good article in The Financial Times [ft.com] today about the future of music and the threat from music downloads.

    It's coming there is no doubt about it. At last with the ipod we have a usable MP3 player and with iTunes a service that can mean you can be legal... But will the record labels be able to move in and dominate the online distribution industry before it even begins?

    I certainly question their expertise in this area and perhaps an online retailer is better to deal with the customer than th

  • what about interoperability (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Wordsmith ( 183749 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @12:00PM (#7386840) Homepage
    With all these services cropping up, I'm beginning to wonder about the limits of the interoperability (and longevity) of the formats used for the files I buy (rent?).

    I can go out to any CD store, and I can bring my CD home and listen to it in any CD player from any company. This will remain true long after CD is supplanted by the Next Big Thing (TM). It's not difficult to find a record player, although they're not as omnipresent as they once were. It takes a little more work, but I can find someone to sell me an 8-track player or a reel-to-reel, too. Worst case, I can build one with the right components and little know-how (that I don't happen to have).

    When I buy a song from Itunes, its in a proprietary format I can only read with apple's products. That's fine for now (they're great products), but what am I going to do 10 years down the line if Apple gets out of the music business. The selection is a little more flexible on the WMA-based music side, as Microsoft is licensing the format and its DRM to anyone and everyone, but ultimately, you can run into a lesser version of the same problem.

    I don't want to have to install 10 different proprietary music players and buy 10 different portable devices just to shop from 10 different online stores. And I don't want my purchases to become useless just because a company goes out of business or drops its music player/sales line - or because I switch operating systems or even upgrade to a new OS revision that isn't supported.

    For now, I'll stick with ripping my own CDs to unprotected MP3s (sorry OGG, I have a nomad). I'll reconsider once (if) everyone settles on a defacto standard for a format that's not too restrictive to but useful.

    • Ummm ... I don't know what you're talking about. You can burn *ANY* tunes you buy from Apple to a CD-R and use that 20 years down the line assuming the CD-R is still good. WMA dies when MS decides it wants you to upgrade. In terms of easy to use, AAC doesn't fly for non-iPods and I hate having to boot Win2K under vmware to burn CDs via iTunes. However, it's liveable (more liveable than WMA) until Apple puts out a Linux version of iTunes.
      • Those are the reasons I prefer Itunes AACs to WMAs, but you still wind up with vendor lock-in problems.

        For instance - lets say I don't have a pressing need to burn my AACs to CD format, I figure I can do it later. Only Apple goes out of business (isn't that always supposed to be right around the corner?), and my copy of Itunes no longer has a way to verify its authorized to use my purchased AACs. At this point, I'm screwed.

        Also, even though I CAN burn a CD, the actual purchase is for a music file. I want
      • You have CD-R's that last 20 years? tell me where to find these, mine start to go downhill after about 12 months. And they aren't nearly as scratch resistant.

        WMA dies when MS decides it wants you to upgrade.

        Pure FUD. Microsoft hasn't ever released anything that couldn't read in the old formats and convert them to the new. WMA and AAC have the same kind of DRM options, it's really a toss up between them. The difference is WMA is supported by more players.
        • You have CD-R's that last 20 years? tell me where to find these, mine start to go downhill after about 12 months. And they aren't nearly as scratch resistant.

          What is the practical useful life of the typical CDR? I'm talking about CDRs that aren't used that often (maybe once a month at most), don't get abused, and are stored in a nice sleeve in a CD case. I've often wondered about this, so if you could provide insight about this, it would be appreciated.
  • So you'll be downloading something by radiohead, and all of a sudden your download will be inexplicably transferred to brittany spears or the backstreet boys. Either that, or you'll go there looking for music and all you'll find is stupid documentaries on musicians (and I use that term loosely) you could care less about. When will clear channel have their own service? It is only a matter of time.
  • This all strikes me as dot-com redux: Let's sell stuff, and figure out later how we're going to make money from it.

    I can see why Apple is in the music download business, even given the terms that pretty much limit profitability to the labels. For them, music downloads are sort of a loss leader/tailer to extremely profitable iPod sales. Other music download companies, unless they own the music they're selling and thus can keep the royalties, are going to have a very hard time making any money on this.

    Let's

  • MTV Runined its music cred and its ruining MTV2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by evilned ( 146392 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @12:42PM (#7387299) Homepage
    This is not going to go well, as its been noted MTV doesnt play videos anymore except for TRL and late night. What is more disturbing is what they have done with MTV2. During the day, it seems to be competing with BET for the rap and R&B market. To hear anything else, its always late at night and at weird times. Any show that plays anything slightly out of the American mainstream, like 120 minutes or AMP has to be shown at a time people like me are either asleep or watching a live concert somewhere. Now they want to sell me music online? Nope, sorry, your brand name stands for the same sort of Clear Channel homogenization that I can't stand. I'll stick with iTunes.
    • As someone who fondly remembers the MTV of the 80's, when they actually showed videos from diverse acts for most of the day, I agree wholeheartedly with the parent poster. These days on the rare occasions when they do play music, it's the same ten or so shit videos every time, and the segments between them are supremely irritating.

      ~Philly

  • The future of music (Score:2, Insightful)

    by maccw ( 693528 )
    I think that "stealing" mp3's was ultimately a situation that needed to change. But, it loosened up the whole industry and got people listening to all kinds of music that they wouldn't have otherwise. Music became interesting again because it seemed to be back in the peoples hands and out of Casey Cassim and Dick Clarks hands. It got people interested in music again. It was culturally a great thing. Suddenly every DVD and CD player was wired for MP3's. This happened well before there was a "legal" way of g

  • I didn't know... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @01:24PM (#7387602) Homepage
    I didn't know that MTV was even in the music business anymore! How are they going to have any credibility in the music download business.

    --

    I sold my iPod on eBay to get a dellPod! The best choice I ever made.

  • Analysts said MTV, with its global presence and ubiquity in the living rooms of teenagers and young adults would have a leg up on established competitors but was slow in entering the market for music downloads.

    Apple launched a Microsoft Windows-compatible version of its software in October and its online music store has sold approximately 13 million songs since its launch in April, analysts said.

    Let's see, MP3's have been around for years now, and Apple _just_ got into the game this past April, and has

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