Apple seeks online music shake-up
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It should be mentioned that the Norwegian consumer interest organization Forbrukerraadet have just taken another step in their war on Fairplay (and the way it locks customers to Ipod products), and are gaining momentum in Europe with their demands that Apple should change or at the very least licence the protection technology to competitors in the portable mp3 business.
They interpret this statement from Jobs as an attempt to divert the criticism by placing the blame elsewhere, as well as creating noise to drown the original debate.
Kjetil
They interpret this statement from Jobs as an attempt to divert the criticism by placing the blame elsewhere, as well as creating noise to drown the original debate.
Kjetil
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Of course this came about because of the criticism from various European consumer interest organisations, but I don't see how that essay tries to drown the original issue. It is a quite cleverly constructed move to either sustain the status quo or force some else's hand.
I also don't see why they single out Apple (e.g. PlaysForSure songs don't play on the iPod, Zune songs don't play on either PlaysForSure or the iPod).
The honest truth is that interoperability and DRM are mutually exclusive, at least IMO.
I also don't see why they single out Apple (e.g. PlaysForSure songs don't play on the iPod, Zune songs don't play on either PlaysForSure or the iPod).
The honest truth is that interoperability and DRM are mutually exclusive, at least IMO.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Don't forget that Apple makes little if no money from Itunes - they use it as a loss-leader to sell I-pods. Apple has also fought hard against the record companies forcing prices up for Itunes downloads. Jobs has squarely laid the blame for DRM at the door of the record cartels who insist upon it, and I'm more inclined to believe him than a bunch of rapacious cartel accountants.
Here is the full open letter from Jobs.
Here is the full open letter from Jobs.
The iPod doesn't play WM-DRM10 (Janus) songs by choice. Microsoft licenses their DRM technology for free to any interested 3rd parties.
This was purely a political move by Jobs to not appear the bad guy. He's saying "My hands are tied because if we license fairplay, then somebody will crack it (like it hasn't been already). Woe is us. Somebody needs to voluntarily destroy their business model so we can keep ours."
Face it. The recording industry isn't going to give away their wares for free. Jobs is just trying to deflect the public opinion away from his company being unwilling to license their technology with a high and mighty proclaimation that will never come true.
If Jobs really cared about interoperability, he'd license fairplay (even for a fee), but he knows his hardware can't compete on the open market in the long run and the infrastructure he and his marketing team has put together will end up benefiting many others in the market other than Apple.
That aside, I think Apple is smart to not license FairPlay until Microsoft's model starts making real inroads.
This was purely a political move by Jobs to not appear the bad guy. He's saying "My hands are tied because if we license fairplay, then somebody will crack it (like it hasn't been already). Woe is us. Somebody needs to voluntarily destroy their business model so we can keep ours."
Face it. The recording industry isn't going to give away their wares for free. Jobs is just trying to deflect the public opinion away from his company being unwilling to license their technology with a high and mighty proclaimation that will never come true.
If Jobs really cared about interoperability, he'd license fairplay (even for a fee), but he knows his hardware can't compete on the open market in the long run and the infrastructure he and his marketing team has put together will end up benefiting many others in the market other than Apple.
That aside, I think Apple is smart to not license FairPlay until Microsoft's model starts making real inroads.
[QUOTE='[maven]I also don't see why they single out Apple (e.g. PlaysForSure songs don't play on the iPod, Zune songs don't play on either PlaysForSure or the iPod).[/QUOTE]They're not, really. It's just that Apple has a virtual monopoly in the relevant markets, and when governments go after anticompetitive practices they typically go after the biggest actor (who will defend them selves beyond the legal reach of consumer ombudsmen and into the regular courts). Really, it's just the logical way to do it if you're the government and looking to establish case law.
Music sans DRM =! Giving it away. Personally, I think slightly lower prices combined with a unrestricted format would actually increase revenue. Applicable copyright law dosen't go away just because the DRM does, and yhey could still sue downloaders to their greedy little hearts content. Lets face it: DRM on music isn't about piracy, it's about eroding fair use rights to the point of establishing a legal framework for adopting a locked-in pay-per-device, subscription based, or pay-per-play business model.RussSchultz said:
I'm not sure I agree with that.
Its very difficult to have a business of selling digital music online if its easy to get for free.
I think the gaming industry (PC vs. Console, for example) is a pretty good indication that if you can download it, you lose a large chunk of business. Shops like Electronics Boutique are almost out of the PC game selling business entirely, and I think its not because games can't be good on the PC, but that the sell/play ratio of consoles is approaching 100%, whereas on PCs its probably much, much, much lower. (I'd guess in the 30% range or lower).
Its very difficult to have a business of selling digital music online if its easy to get for free.
I think the gaming industry (PC vs. Console, for example) is a pretty good indication that if you can download it, you lose a large chunk of business. Shops like Electronics Boutique are almost out of the PC game selling business entirely, and I think its not because games can't be good on the PC, but that the sell/play ratio of consoles is approaching 100%, whereas on PCs its probably much, much, much lower. (I'd guess in the 30% range or lower).
And he has fought hard against lowering prices too...
In addition artists and labels that asked for DRM to be removed from itunes were told no. This is just more PR to cover their collective monopolistic bums and look saintly while doing so. I do respect apple's PR it is amazing.
Not really Russ. There are many who buy music from itunes, yet almost all can already be had for free from nefarious sources. If it is popular it can be gotten freely. Selling drm free music would take the step out where someone rips cd, but honestly do you think that would matter?
BTW you deserve good rep for first post.
You'll never deter the hard core pirates, but if its easy to share among friends, then its going to happen and music sales will suffer. And that isn't "fair use", not with digital media being exact copies.
If all your buying is a file, then why buy it when your friend already has it and can email it to you? (Beyond the whole "I feel good about myself" thing).
Capitalism is all about cost/benefit. If I can get the songs for lower 'cost' (i.e. hassle) by buying them, then I'll buy them. If its easier to get them without buying them, then I'll share them. The price would have to go WAY down to make it cheaper/easier to buy than to copy them from a friend. For me, it would have to go way down to consider over ripping them from the CD myself, but I know that cost/equation is different for others (obviously, since people are buying content over the net).
If all your buying is a file, then why buy it when your friend already has it and can email it to you? (Beyond the whole "I feel good about myself" thing).
Capitalism is all about cost/benefit. If I can get the songs for lower 'cost' (i.e. hassle) by buying them, then I'll buy them. If its easier to get them without buying them, then I'll share them. The price would have to go WAY down to make it cheaper/easier to buy than to copy them from a friend. For me, it would have to go way down to consider over ripping them from the CD myself, but I know that cost/equation is different for others (obviously, since people are buying content over the net).
It is in much of Europe. The limits are a little fuzzy, but the age old practice of swapping a few tracks - as in sharing a mixed tape - would be legal, while the ad-verbatim duplication of an entire collection probably would not.
Nevertheless, most music files that people have on their digital players are not DRM-protected at all and the music industry haven't gone the way of the dodo yet. I think it's a fallacy to equate the ability to evade payment with a lack of willingness to pay.
I'd pay 99C (even though that's a ripoff) for a song if I could get it in any format and bitrate I wanted, without DRM. That's the main reason I buy my music at allofmp3.com.
Blazkowicz
Legend
here we have Fnac and Virgin selling unrestricted mp3 now.
yeah people will still share their 10GB mp3 collection with friends, but imagine if 5% of a collection of say 4000 mp3 are paid, that's $/EUR 200 in revenue already, isn't that nice enough.
and, I don't know what are the bitrates, but I know I'd be willing to pay for say 256K VBR with good filenames and tags, and degressive prices ($1 for a song, $8 for an album and $20 for three albums).
yeah people will still share their 10GB mp3 collection with friends, but imagine if 5% of a collection of say 4000 mp3 are paid, that's $/EUR 200 in revenue already, isn't that nice enough.
and, I don't know what are the bitrates, but I know I'd be willing to pay for say 256K VBR with good filenames and tags, and degressive prices ($1 for a song, $8 for an album and $20 for three albums).
Probably Jobs statement is in part a PR, but it is good see that they are under pressure and logic is pointing back into the DRM free world.
The DRM is just an atempt to push consumers into a new quantum pricing level and scheme.
Jaron Lanier has an interresting article about how the LP to CD moved the market to a higher price and its good and bad effects.
Last month a friend gave me a music CD with some DRM protection and I could not play it in any CD player. Also I didnt wanted to install its DRM software control in my PC. This is what I call TotalFrustration TM.
And I could easilly circunvent the problem with some of the freely available software.
This friend said he will never more buy any CD from this specific label.
The DRM is just an atempt to push consumers into a new quantum pricing level and scheme.
Jaron Lanier has an interresting article about how the LP to CD moved the market to a higher price and its good and bad effects.
Last month a friend gave me a music CD with some DRM protection and I could not play it in any CD player. Also I didnt wanted to install its DRM software control in my PC. This is what I call TotalFrustration TM.
And I could easilly circunvent the problem with some of the freely available software.
This friend said he will never more buy any CD from this specific label.
RussSchultz said:
It's not free. There's fees and royalties for both Windows Media Audio (depending of codec features, channels, etc.) as well as WMRM. Also WMRM can be pretty buggy in many conditions when working with different services (not to mention how horribly buggy the subscription features are)...
I think that's the kids gloves excuse for it. I don't think they wanna have to support it either. If you control it, then you become the support center for it, you hand it over to a licensing authority, you lose the control you have over making changes (and those that you do make are fairly public), and if anybody follows Apple you'll know that Steve doesn't like his thunder being stolen...
Who said anything about free? Besides, you never know... Some of the majors *are* evaluating the possibilities of moving towards non-DRM'd content.
Difficult, but not impossible... The #2 online music store in the US (not counting the questionable AllOfMyMp3) is eMusic who sell nothing but indie label mp3s.
Sxotty said:
Actually he fought against tiered pricing, not lower prices. Yes labels wanted to reduce the prices for backcatalog material, but wanted to raise the prices for new releases and "hot" content.
As for indies asking for selling non-DRM'd material, not all the details are available. I remember the president of Nettwork mentioning it, but there's no details on Nettwork's distribution agreements (not that I'd expect there would be). Quite often these guys will make some statements without considering their existing digital distribution agreements. The content that many music stores sell don't even come from the labels directly, but from digital distribution aggregators (who themselves have their own agreements with the various labels). For instance, a lot of stuff that iTunes originally sold came from LoudEye. Another example is the Orchard who deal with a lot of imported Chinese music that has no existing licensing or distribution rights on CD in North America). Another example is in the EU, Apple gets all of it's content from Sony DADC (who in turn has their own agreements on distribution)...
I'm sorry, I was incorrect. Its a $.10 royalty, vs. $.75 for AAC.
The only problems we've seen have been the hack/patch/hack/patch spate that happened 2-3 months ago. Other than that, the bugs have been in our implementation and not the technology itself. The real problem with WMDRM/P4S/etc. is that Microsoft doesn't spell out the rules very well and there's a lot of engineering hunt/peck before getting something that works with everything.
That and the different providers can have their own application which talks to your device in slightly different ways than the others, causing issues.
I try to avoid em now, but I must admit allofmp3 has by far the best website design for ease of use etc. I wish some clearly legal company would emulate them.