Thus, the offer of DRM-free music exclusively to Amazon, and at lower prices than Apple can offer, is a direct attack by the record labels on the increasing power of Apple's iTunes. The record labels now view the massive iTunes juggernaut as a threat. More retailers means more competition, which is good for consumers. The major labels want nothing more than to break Apple's dominance of the digital music business. Do you think they charge Apple and Amazon the same price for each track and Apple simply charges you more and pockets the difference as a higher markup? The labels would like you to think that, but they actually charge Amazon less for each track, and that's how Amazon can charge you less.ĭo you think Apple insists on the DRM but Amazon has the vision to see that the future of music is DRM-free? Do you think Jeff Bezos is a better negotiator and he was able to get a better price per track than Steve Jobs? Without putting up with DRM? The reason you can find more music on Amazon at a lower price is that the Record Labels want it that way. If it seems a little odd to you that Amazon is somehow able to offer all this music up DRM-free, while the majority of Apple's iTunes Store catalog is still stuck in the old testament world of DRM customer punishment, you're not alone. Every purchase of DRM-ed music, in the face of Amazon's excellent alternative, is an implicit vote for more useless, aggravating DRM on your music. Needless to say, I've been buying as much music as I can from Amazon to vote with my wallet and demonstrate to the music labels that yes, giving the customer what they want does pay. And no evil, consumer hostile DRM! It's almost unbelievable. And there are tons of tracks on Amazon that are actually less expensive than on iTMS, so you get better music for less money without the DRM hassle.īetter quality. The same album is also $9.99 from Apple, but you get DRM. You can generally get the same music for the same price, or less, at Amazon's MP3 store - completely free of any form of DRM! Reg Braithwaite provides an example:įor example, Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 on 256-bit DRM-free MP3 is just $9.99 from Amazon. FairPlay was indeed an acceptable tradeoff when Apple's iTunes Store was one of the few easy and legal ways to get digital music of any kind.īut that's no longer true today. I'm no fan of DRM, but I do accept that sometimes it is a necessary evil. These songs were originally sold at a 30 cent premium, but later reduced to the standard 99 cents.) (EMI and independent artists are also offered in "iTunes Plus" DRM-free format - at last count, around 2 million songs. Songs can only be played on a computer with iTunes or an iPod other mp3 devices do not support FairPlay encoded tracks.Users can access their purchased songs on a maximum of five computers.Users can make a maximum of seven CD copies of any particular playlist containing songs purchased from the iTunes Store.Music purchased from the Apple store comes encumbered with Apple's flavor of Digital Rights Management, known as FairPlay: The iTunes Store is the number one music retailer in the USĬlearly Apple is doing something right.But the iPod, and the companion iTunes Store, have been hugely successful: A quick peek at the first iPod ad provides a little context to how rough that first generation really was compared to the competely polished product we enjoy on store shelves today. The success of the iPod was anything but a foregone conclusion back in 2001. I'm sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, "Too smoky. It's ripe for parody, as Andy Baio explains: Rob's pithy dismissal of the iPod at its introduction has become virtually synonymous with how out of touch the Slashdot crowd is with the rest of the world. But in fact, that quote is part of the body of the news entry, and it came directly from Rob Malda, the founder of Slashdot. I had always assumed this particular quote was written by a random Slashdot user in the comments. It's from the Slashdot article on the introduction of the original Apple iPod back in 2001. You've probably read this classic boner of an iPod quote at some point:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |