“Apple’s increasing role in media distribution from music to books, its aspirations in advertising and hit products like the iPad have made the company one of the most influential players in an industry struggling to adapt to the Internet age,” Oreskovic and Thomasch report.
“For movie studios, publishers and music labels, Apple represents promising new ways to reach consumers as well as a potentially threatening shift in a balance of power that has traditionally favored the creators of content,” Oreskovic and Thomasch report. “‘It’s hard not to be aware of them,’ said one senior media executive on the sideline of the conference, hosted by boutique investment bank Allen & Co. ‘Apple wants to sell devices. For them, the higher the quality, and the lower the cost of the content, the better.'”
Oreskovic and Thomasch report, “With a market capitalization of $235 billion, Apple recently surpassed Microsoft Corp. to claim the title of world’s most valuable technology company.”
“Apple seems to be everywhere these days. It ranks as the top U.S. music retailer thanks to its iTunes online music store. Its catalog of more than 200,000 App Store applications for the iPhone and iPad offers an opportunity to play a similar role in newfangled entertainment and gaming products,” Oreskovic and Thomasch report. “And with the new iPad tablet, Apple is moving into the electronic book market, competing with Amazon.com Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. as a book distributor.
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
“For movie studios, publishers and music labels, Apple represents … a potentially threatening shift in a balance of power that has traditionally favored the creators of content,”
Pfft. By “creators of content”, they really mean the large corporations that until now have held sway over the creative market. Far from posing a threat to actual creators, Apple’s initiatives have offered them greater power by promising the opportunity to bypass the gatekeepers altogether.
——RM
@LordRobin:
amen,
@LordRobin
Amen.
this is the greatest fear of the WS shysters. It is like henry Ford all over again. The neo-robber barons are livid., from omaha to redmond.
What I’m saddened by is the disappearance of small distribution points, and the many jobs they created, for all of that content. Book stores, video stores, music stores – all gone. Sure, they are being replaced to some degree by other things (one Apple store can currently support as many employees as about three small book stores) but the loss of the expertise of those people, as well as the social aspect of those stores, is troubling to me. It’s going to happen regardless, obviously, but I’ll miss those things.
I think in the book of Revelations it says something about there being one company to rule them all as it first did Adam and Eve.
“Media and technology” my ass. Look at the list of “moguls” and “such luminaries” that go there. You wonder why Jobs did not show up? There’s a reason why Eric Schmole is more comfortable at Sun Valley than at Burning Man. These guys are in sales. Technology is just the tools they want to use to control sales. You know what Jobs said about letting people in sales control a company.
@aka Christian
I agree with you totally. That kept huge numbers of people employed.
@aka Christian – I agree. As one who still prefer buying CD in store and rip to my iPod, the loss of browsing local music and book stores is a loss of cultural experience as well as tax revenue to benefit local economy.
Unfortunately the local books and music economies were already wrecked by Amazon and Best Buy and such way before iTunes became #1 music retailer.
People need to value physical experiences (I realize the irony even as I type away here). A good local library that opens on weekends where people can go and dedicate a time to read, research, write, and learn, and bring their children there to teach them the habit, is an investment in a community that cannot be measured by simple, short-term economics (I know, I’m sitting in one).
Walmart. ‘Nuff said.
“For movie studios, publishers and music labels, Apple represents … a potentially threatening shift in a balance of power that has traditionally favored the creators of content,”
All Apple is doing is providing another way for “creators of content” to sell their stuff.
The real competitors of “creators of content” are, well, other creators.
Now the distributers of other people’s creations, that’s another story.
I was so not surprised to hear Jobs wasn’t going. I thought, why the hell would he want to hang out with those cafones?
@aka Christian
I, too, mourn the small bookstore and local music shop. I have always loved the smell of books, new and old, and I would have been happy owning a small bookstore and helping people to find new authors and little known works. Economically, however, that would have been a disaster.
Mayberry is gone. Walmart has smothered the five and dime. Radio Shack became another me-too consumer electronics shop. Hobby stores and game stores have all but disappeared. And Amazon, iTunes, and other major online retailers are putting the squeeze on brick and mortar shops of all types.
Close eyes. Turn around 3 times quick. Remember we are now in the 21st century with electronics and not the 20th century with Henry Ford.
Ford gave the masses transportation, and what is long forgotten, the Model T truck which allowed farmers and businessmen of all types to expand and speed up what & how they did their work.
Jobs and Apple’s products have given the individual entrepeneur in music, video, books, pamphlets and such a series of tools and methods to allow themselves to become “publishers”.
That to me is progress.
Hi all,
Today I am going to boycott owning a iPhone I had a ear phone jack problem went to claim for my warranty did you know what that representative told me? My iPhone is water corrotated which I didn’t have touch the phone with any water man! This is ridiculous apple need to rethink their water sensor system.
@Hi Iphoneboycott,
Bye, y’all.
So in a bout a week and a half i”m supposed to go off to extern in glendale. I know it is not that far from sun valley but traffic on the 5 south can get really hectic. Does anyone know what time it”s best for me to leave to avoid being late?
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Re: iphoneboycott.
Yikes! Reading that was painful. Think, proof, re-read before hitting submit. Thank you.