“While Apple has its committed loyalists on the hardware side, it seems to have painted itself into a corner on the content side — and that means music,” Francine Brevetti writes for Inside Bay Area. “The question is, will music lovers get over its limitations in the long-term?”
“The Apple music store iTunes is available to anyone, even those with a PC. Those with an iPod device can use only the music in the format deliverd by iTunes,” Brevetti writes. “Admittedly, iTunes is a big house with hundreds of thousands of entries and it has sold hundreds of millions of songs online at 99 cents a pop. However, those who buy music from PC-based music stores can use more than iTunes; they can buy from a variety of different platforms and retailers supported by Windows media. For instance liquid.com, Napster, Wal-Mart, MusicMatch and so many others, many of which are selling their songs for less than 99 cents.”
MacDailyNews Note: Select songs are sold by others for less than 99-cents per track, that is. Many others sell other songs for more than 99-cents. Apple’s iTunes Music Store offers over a million songs, for clarity’s sake.
“‘The iPod Shuffle will give iTunes access to more customers and competition. Selling more players will open more people to iTunes, but it will also make people aware that they are limited to iTunes,’ said Lisa Malley, senior brand manager for portable media devices with Creative Labs,” Brevetti writes. “‘If the dominant platform is Windows, then Windows media will proliferate faster,’ said Mark Farish, Samsung’s director of marketing of digital audio systems. ‘The reason Macintosh failed in the PC market was because it didn’t license its technologies to other manufacturers, which Microsoft did. Now iTunes is doing the same. Microsoft powers maybe 10 different music content providers and multiple portable audio providers compatible with them. Consumers need choice. Apple dominates now, but in the bigger picture it won’t stay that way for long.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes works on both Mac and Windows and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) offers over a million tracks for 99-cents per track. We fail to see what’s so limiting about those facts. The key is the iPod. Most people have iPods, so they can use iTunes and buy from iTMS on either Windows or Mac. Those complaining are the makers of portable players that they don’t sell like the iPod and online music stores that can’t sell to iPod owners. Well, too bad. Make a better mousetrap and see if you can sell it to the masses. Until then, we guess complaining and whining and plain old FUD will continue to be the order of the day from the also-rans.
The Macintosh platform required and still requires huge investments by developers to create compatible software. So, when faced with budgetary contraints, they chose and still sometimes choose to go with the most popular platforms. The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded, for very little cost, in any format the “developers” (musicians and labels) desire: AAC with Apple’s FairPlay, MP3, WMA, etc. The music doesn’t need to be rewritten, recorded, and remastered. It’s like writing Photoshop once and then pressing a button to translate it for use on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. To draw an analogy between Mac OS licensing and the iPod/iTunes symbiotic relationship simply highlights Samsung’s director of marketing’s ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
The iPod is not the Mac, so stop trying to compare them – August 13, 2004
Horrors! Lisa from Creative just said I’m “limited” to using iTMS to get more music – AND I’ve got an iPod – double horrors!
Yeah, right.
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Magic word: “deep” as in “It’s gettin’ _____ in here.”
There’s no problem with a little choice. With the iPod (which I love, don’t get me wrong), you can only really get music from iTMS (if you play by the rules). It wouldn’t hurt if there were other options, i.e., if Apple licensed FairPlay. The iTMS experience is so superior, that I don’t think Apple has much to worry about by licensing the tech, and they’d gain some (more) positive press. I think people around here are just a little too quick to pounce when the observation is made that iPod users really only have one on-line option (again, if they’re going to play by the rules).
That said, there are a couple of on-line music stores selling non-DRM encumbered tracks, so I guess those can be considered an option, as well…
“Those with an iPod device can use only the music in the format deliverd by iTunes”
Doh! So what about MP3 files? Seems to me that the ones locked into a format (until recently) were Sony, who would only let you use ATRAC.
Surely the myriad of 3rd party onliine music stores allow you to convert your music to MP3 which can then be used on an iPod – or are they like Sony -where is the lock in with Apple exactly?
Until anybody other than Apple can offer up a music store that people will buy hundreds of millions of tracks from annually, Apple, the iTMS and the iPod will be just fine.
As of right now, the only people that can beat Apple is Apple. And the only way they can do that is to let the iPod, iTMS or iTunes stagnate. None of which has happened yet, nor do we have any reason to believe they will happen anytime in the foreseeable future given Apple’s dedication to improving all of them.
If the proliferation of the Windows Media Player were the key to the whole thing, Apple would never have become the dominant player here
Those with an iPod device can use only the music in the format deliverd by iTunes,
Man, they just don’t get any smarter do they?
Schick sells their razors. Gillette sells theirs. The are not interoperable. Big deal. Consumers choose.
Next…
Let these “competitors” make their services Mac-compatible. Then tell me I have a choice.
I really feel “locked in” when I can choose from over one million songs from the iTunes music store, rip my own CDs or play any mp3 or aac file. These clowns are just trying to scare the public into thinking they’re being locked in when they really aren’t.
The smartest thing Steve Jobs has done to date is to NOT open up the FairPlay DRM to these bozos. They simply want to leech off of the success of the iPod without having done any of the work themselves, that’s all…
“Apple dominates now, but in the bigger picture it won’t stay that way for long.”
Mark Farish can keep wishing all he likes, but simply wishing for something won’t make it so… LOL
As an aside, one of my grouses with articles like this is that they tell one side of the story.
She quotes two people who make WMA-compatible players, Creative and Samsung. She quotes a “mystery analyst.” And she quotes a senior editor at CNet.
Okay. Fine. Where’s the quote from Apple? Not even a “Apple did not return comments in time for press.” Sounds a little one-sided to me. She quotes two iPod competitors but no quote from the maker of the iPod?
I know this sounds kind of obvious,
but why does no one mention that you don’t have to have an iPod to download and use music from iTunes? I listen to my music just fine on my computer and car stereo with no iPod involved.
Creative…
Sorry Creative but I know of at least another place, and i am sure there are more places than the one I am about to mention where you can buy legal music. Such as at: Bleep.com.
Jefre
Ooops. Sorry I meant to address “Choice.”
It was painful reading their whining.
There is a choice. There are plenty of choices. Go to any store and there are 100’s if not thousands of players and there are 10’s of music stores. People choose what they want to use
They choose Apple because…. “it just works”. It solves the need.
Every major media technology ultimately standardized, whether it was by default (VHS beating out Beta) or by the corporations themselves (Sony and Philips deciding on the CD format).
This same convergence MUST happen with digital music if the sector (not just Apple) is to survive in the long run. Perhaps the market will converge on AAC/Fairplay. It’s the most likely standard at this point, but I wish Apple could do something to promote that standardization.
Also, I think the quality of the downloads must go up dramatically before online music starts to seriously dominate CDs. Right now, the quality is *worse* than CDs. It’s gotta get to a point where it’s at least as good if not better than CDs before it becomes the dominant form.
I suspect Apple is going to hit us with a *serious* quality upgrade this year–e.g., release the music at better than CD quality–and then try to make that the de facto standard. At least, I hope they will.
Apple dominates now, but in the bigger picture it won’t stay that way for long.”
Yeah, that’s one of those BOLD comments, that, in a hundred years, just may pan out.. so.. as a journalist who is totally clueless, s/he’s happy with those odds..
talk about an inside scoop..asking the competition if Apple will keep winning.. hahahah
You know, they have been whining about this for a year now, “Consumers need choice” hoping that the consumers will take their FUD and run away from Apple’s music platform. Is it working? Do consumers really seem to care? Based on the continued growth of iPod sales, it appears not. The competition would do good to leave this dead horse alone and go find another piece of FUD to saddle up.
Boy this is rich…here goes…
“said Lisa Malley, senior brand manager for portable media devices with Creative Labs,”
…corporate speak for “senior scapegoat” when it all hits the fan.
“‘If the dominant platform is Windows, then Windows media will proliferate faster,’ said Mark Farish,
…if??… seems iTunes has proliferated faster, therefore Macintosh must be the dominate platform!!
‘The reason Macintosh failed in the PC market was because it didn’t license its technologies to other manufacturers, which Microsoft did. Now iTunes is doing the same.
…failed…rising profits, rising sales, demand beyond belief vs. increase customer dissatisfaction with windows (who is basically licensing stolen technology i.e. Mac interface. Guess who’s going to get stomped on if they try to copy iTunes!!)
Microsoft powers maybe 10 different music content providers and multiple portable audio providers compatible with them. Consumers need choice. Apple dominates now, but in the bigger picture it won’t stay that way for long.”
…ten of the smallest and least significant content providers running in the red. Only MS benefits; they don’t care who the provider is or whether they are profitable or not; just whether MS is profitable. If you hold a really little picture, really, really close to your eye, it does “look” big, but how does that help?
just buy your music on cd’s and you’re cool. you get a better quality product, album art, and you can encode it to your heart’s content.
magic word, “methods” as in, there is a method to this madness.
PC world get over it. Just because you drive a yugo that means everybody wants to drive it too.
Prediction
One field where the iPod is surreptitiously working is schools. Soon, we’ll see teachers Podcasting homework and the iPod will become as indispensable as the ball point pen.
These people keep prattling on how iTunes/iPod is a bad for consumer choice. And how this domination is bound to fail.
Why are they more than happy to remind us that M$’s domination in OSes or productivity is actually necessary?
all I can say is that i’m getting an ipod shuffle and noone that can stop me
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what’s that crap about choice.. buy a cd, convert it to aac or mp3 and it works.
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newsflash for the whiners… it _does_ support mp3
it is called mp3 player… see? m, p, three…
multi, plat, form… still following?
I buy music online for multiple sources. And all of it, except from the iTMS is DRM free. Here is a short list:
1. magnatune.com
2. livephish.com
3. livedownload.com
4. munckmusic.com
5. muletracks.com
6. livebonnaroo.com
7. disclogic.com
8. iTunes Music Store
9. BONUS: livemetallica.com (I don’t buy from this one)
Admittedly, these online music stores are specialized in the music choice, but livedownloads.com has a wide variety of live and studio music from many different artists.
limited in my choices my left buttocks cheek.
MDN magic word: “wrote” as in Napster been wrote off.
Don’t know where to begin, That article was SO poorly researched and written.
OK, even giving the point windows is the dominate platform, so what? The iTMS works with windows. Windows store and iPod users outnumber Mac users. iPod and iTunes is its very own platform that can be used by windows or Mac OS. Like Steve said, (paraphrasing here) MS is griping about choice because they don’t like the choice the consumer is making.
About the ‘huge’ number of online stores that offer music, again, so what? Its the same identical music offered by iTMS. If the only value these wanna-be stores offer is a crappy hard to navigate user interface users are not going to come use the service.
My personal feeling is that the record companies could still screw any online music service out of existance. Record labels/RIAA don’t like MS, cause MS wants all the control. (heaven forbid that the labels/RIAA lose any power and control) They don’t like Apple cause Apple gives too much control to the consumer.