“The market for legitimate music downloads is booming, but the stumbling block of incompatibility will not go away. Just ask anyone who has ever tried to put a Napster track on an iPod,” Brian Garrity writes for Billboard.
MacDailyNews Take: Why settle for asking just one? Ask all three of them.
Garrity writes, “Experts say the DRM dilemma might not be resolved for another two years. ‘It’s not going to go away quickly,’ Napster chief technology officer William Pence said at a recent DRM conference in New York.”
MacDailyNews Take: If Napster executives are such DRM experts, why do they use Microsoft’s WMA DRM instead of developing their own? Why two years? Is that how long Napster figures they’ll last?
Garrity writes, “Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM is supported on more than 60 devices and used for digital files sold by dozens of retailers, including Napster, AOL, Yahoo, RealNetworks, Virgin, FYE and Wal-Mart. Apple’s DRM is called Fair Play [sic] and works only in Apple-controlled products and services like the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes Music Store is the only store mentioned above that supports both Mac and Windows. All of the rest that Garrity mentions support only Windows. Apple has sold more songs online than the rest of the above-mentioned outfits combined. Apple’s AAC with FairPlay DRM is the de facto standard for legal online music files. Would it matter if Windows Media were supported by over 60,000 devices if nobody were buying and using them?
MacDailyNews Major Annnouncement: We have developed a car that runs on maple syrup! Exxon is stifling the growth of our product – they need to install maple syrup pumps in their stores! In addition, we’ve developed a maple syrup pump for maple syrup cars! Toyota are stifling the growth of our maple syrup pumps – they need to make cars that run on maple syrup! We’re waiting for The New Zealand Herald and Billboard to pick up our story and help us whine to a larger audience.
Garrity writes, “As more consumers go digital, the compatibility issues between Apple and Microsoft become more pronounced. Apple, the early market leader, has been particularly resistant to shaking hands in the interest of compatibility.”
MacDailyNews Take: The vast majority of consumers are choosing iPods and using Apple’s iTunes Music Store on their Macs or Windows PCs. A song is a song and Apple offers the largest legal music library at consistent prices. Why should Apple give away their business to other music outfits or sell songs for players from which they derive no profit? Solely for the “interest of compatibility?” That’s some business plan. Apple would have a tough time getting shareholder approval for that one.
Garrity writes, “More than 184 million digital tracks were sold in the United States this year through the end of July, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That is almost double the amount sold during the same period in 2004. Still, some digital-music executives say compatibility problems are slowing the growth of legitimate download sales and subscription services.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes Music Store surpassed 300 million songs sold on March 2, 2005 and surpassed 500 million songs on July 18, 2005. Thats’ over 200 million songs right there, in only 4 and a half months. It’s a safe bet that of the 184 million songs sold in the U.S. that Garrity mentions, almost all of them were sold by Apple. So, Apple is slowing down the growth of legitimate download sales? Come on. Apple created the market and it responsible for nearly all of its growth. Apple’s slowing down subscription services somewhat, maybe, since Apple doesn’t offer that option (mainly because it still hasn’t proven to be worth it), but consumers clearly seem to want to own their music much more than they want to rent it, as Apple proven over half a billion times. The only real growth Apple has slowed is the growth of their competitors.
Garrity continues, “Even the CD presents DRM issues, because Apple has not licensed Fair Play for inclusion on copy-protected discs, thus making secure CDs incompatible with the iPod, the most popular portable player with more then 15 million units sold.”
MacDailyNews Take: Those so-called CDs are not Red Book compliant, so they are not even CDs. Apple has sold well over 21 million iPods and counting.
Full article here.
The only people whining are portable digital device makers, online music outfits, and DRM peddlers that are not named Apple. Consumers, meanwhile, are happily buying iPods, importing music from Red Book compliant Compact Discs that they own, and using the iTunes Music Store on both Macs and PCs. The whining that we hear is coming from companies that are losing or have already lost to Apple’s superior symbiotic music solution, iPod+iTunes+iTunes Music Store, not from consumers.
The online music outfits are quite unhappy because the music they sell can’t easily and seamlessly be played on the device most people have chosen to own, Apple’s iPod. The portable digital music player makers are unhappy because very few want their players. People obviously want iPods instead and also wish to utilize Apple’s iTunes Music Store for it’s large library, podcast features, liberal DRM, consistent pricing, exclusives, etc. Microsoft is doubly unhappy because their proprietary WMA DRM is not the de facto standard for portable digital music player or online music services. These three factions, the online music outfits, the portable digital music player makers, and Microsoft, will continue the wails of their death throes via willing and/or ignorant media outlets, but that doesn’t mean that Apple has to change a thing until or unless they see a sound business case for doing so.
It’s the losers (Napster, Microsoft, Sony, Creative, iRiver, RealNetworks, etc.) that are whining. Not music buyers. Not music player buyers. Not Apple. Apple is too busy selling iPods and music online to care about the losers’ sour grapes.
Lastly, achieving a monopoly is legal. It’s monopoly abuse that is illegal, as Microsoft knows all too well. Apple isn’t forcing anyone to buy iPods or use their iTunes Music Store. Consumers are choosing to do so of their own free will. In droves.
[UPDATE: 8/13, 10:05am ET: Changed headline.]
Related article:
The New Zealand Herald serves up a steaming pile of iPod FUD – August 11, 2005
The de facto standard for legal digital online music files: Apple’s protected MPEG-4 Audio (.m4p) – December 15, 2004
From OPJ
<<What I *did* write is that Apple is behaving badly by not licensing Fairplay and thereby restricting both the variety of music, hardware and ancillary products that are available.
I fail to see how that is in the interest of the consumer–and fail to see how that deserves cheerleading from the site that should be written in the interest of its readers, not a corporation.>>
Hey OPJ, what has MSFT done to embrace interoperability. WMA does not work on Mac. As a Mac user, if I wanted to buy a Rio player, I would also have to buy a Wintel to use it. WMA DOESN’T WORK ON MAC. That is MSFT’s choice.
Apple on the other hand made iTunes available for Windows. WINDOWS USERS, HAVING A CHOICE OF 60+ PLAYERS AND A DOZEN DIFFERENT SERVICES, CHOSE IPOD & ITMS.
It appears to me that Apple has done far more than MSFT to create an interoperable product. Creative, Rio, Samsung etc can’t bitch MSFT (their livelihoods depend on MSFT) so they bitch Apple.
Interoperability is a non-issue.
I love all these DRMed cd’s coming out, because everyone who attempts to rip them with their computer will learn a painful lesson.
Just buy it via iTMS in the first place
What will be painful is those who started building a collection of cd’s, not realizing they are copy proected and buy the time they get a computer to rip them the M$ DRM will be so tough that copying will not be possible.
Shucks, if I weren’t so stupid, I might read all these articles coming out all at once and say to myself “It’s almost like a corporation that spends millions of dollars hiring really expensive Public Relations firms somehow got all these “journalists” to all write various versions of the same spin, all at once…”
Luckily, I’m too stupid for that kind of thinking. I just swallow everything I read in the paper.
Gregg Thurman said “Two years ago there were well over 100 different MP3 players on the market. Today there are about 60. The consolidation of the weaker makers is in full steam. All the rantings from makers and services are the squealings of firms in their death throes.”
I agree with your points whole heartedly except you are mis-interpreting some facts they said only 60 players that are M$ DRM compatible. there are still hundreds of mp3 makers, but they are just smart enough to cater to the mp3 and not the DRM audience.
This “compatibility issue” is really a non-starter. I mean, all the music stores basically offer the same songs at the same quality and around same price—at least as far as the US and major labels. If someone doesn’t want an iPod, it really doesn’t affect his/her choice of “software.”
This is like saying the console gaming industry would really blossom if the manufacturers (Sony, MS and Nintendo) would just standardize their software.
Wait maybe the whinners are on to something. Apple could promise to be WMA compliant just after Microsoft becomes fully MacOS compliant.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Why is standardization only a problem when it impacts the Microsoft world?! The Mac faithful have worked around, thru and over compatability issues for years… It’s not fun, but it is part of the territory. Microsoft is the king of incompatable formats.
Also, there are other compatibility issues that are out in front the tech media community. Why isn’t the issue of digital music compatability brought into a larger context of media compatability. Because, any journalist of any sense knows that every company desires to establish their own standard of preference as the popular choice for consumers giving them a business edge. A natural fallout of our capatalistic system which has blessed and served us so well.
Can we please stop calling copy-protected discs Compact Discs.
The Red Book spec does provide a means for copy management, namely the SCMS system which is largely ignored by Apple’s iTunes, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player or any of the other popular digital jukeboxes.
Any other “kludge” that effectively makes a data session the initial session of a disc means that the disc in question ceases to be spec-compliant. It’s that simple.
Also, if you use iTunes with a converted CD library, you have a range of rendering devices other than the iPod: you can use Sonos’ Zoneplayer, Roku’s Soundbridge, Hemestedt’s Hifidelio, Olive’s Symphony and even iRiver’s range of personal digital devices: the thing is that iRiver – AFAIK – will only play MP3 files and requires you to use a truly inelegant (dare I say, almost Windows-like) mechanism to get the files onto the player.
I grant people the fact that Protected AAC is a problem with only Airport Express able to render the files. However, the problem is mitigated by burning to CD and then reimporting, at which point you can render to any device you please.
Also let’s remember one interesting fact: between 28th April 2003 and 16th October 2003 (171 days), Apple sold 13 million tracks to a Jaguar-using population based solely in the United States – a rate of nearly 70,000 downloads/day. Following the launch of the Windows (2000/XP) version of iTunes and iTMS on the 16 October 2003, Apple achieved the next 12 million downloads in only 57 days (12 December 2003) at a rate of over 210,000 tracks/day.
In other words, Windows users – who, contrary to popular history, had plenty of choice of second-rate music stores and third-rate players prior to 16/10/03 – appear to have been responsible for iTMS sales rising by 300% in less than two months. Furthermore, by 11/03/04 – ninety days later, Apple had sold another 25 million tracks: a rate of nearly 278,000/day proving that the initial take-up was no fluke.
Furthermore, in Q1 FY2004 (the quarter in which iTunes for Windows was released), iPod sales increased to 733,000 units for the quarter compared to 336,000 units in the previous quarter. Sadly the figures for Q1 FY2003 do not appear to be available, but would probably be under 80,000 units.
So, by being the only cpmpany to create and support a fully-integrated music management solution on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, Apple nearly doubled sales of its personal music player and tripled sales of downloads from its allegedly proprietary music store. So maybe, instead of whining about incompatible DRM systems, maybe the followers of the WMA architecture should ask themselves if they could make their lives better by supporting AAC through QuickTime (thus making their players cross-platform) and working harder (with people like Art & Logic) to make their players work under integration with iTunes.
I know of one music player manufacturer who simply refuses to integrate their player under iTunes because, and I quote a senior sales body, “they don’t want to be too closely identified with Apple and iTunes Music Store”. Now I don’t mean to be judgemental, but that strikes me a little like cutting off your nose to spite your face…
Speaking of “choice” it would seem that NOT everyone likes Sony Music in Japan….
Musicians working to join iTunes in Japan
AUG. 10 3:01 A.M. ET Japanese musicians under contract with Sony and other labels that haven’t joined Apple’s iTunes Music Store are starting to defy their recording companies and trying to get their music on the popular download service launched last week in Japan.
At least one artist has already gone against his label to offer his songs on iTunes. And a major agency that manages Japanese musicians said Wednesday it was interested in a possible deal with Apple Computer Inc., regardless of the recording companies’ positions.
Online music stores had not taken off in Japan until iTune’s arrival last Thursday, which opened with a million songs from 15 Japanese record labels.
In just four days, customers downloaded 1 million songs — the fastest pace for the service’s launch in any of the 20 nations it’s become available, including the U.S. Most songs cost 150 yen (US$1.35; euro1) to download, and only 10 percent cost 200 yen (US$1.80; euro1.40).
But Sony Corp.’s music division has not signed up to join Apple’s service.
The two companies have emerged as major rivals in the portable music player business. Apple’s iPod music player, which stores music on a hard drive, has hurt Sony, which its own Network Walkman, some of which have hard drives.
Sony Music Entertainment and Apple say they’re in talks but there’s been no agreement.
But wayward artists could just start averting the issue and opt to offer their music to iTunes.
Rock musician Motoharu Sano, who has a recording contract with Sony, is making some of his songs available on iTunes, according to his official Web page.
“It is an individual’s freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are,” Sano was quoted as saying by Japan’s top business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun Wednesday.
Amuse Inc., an agent for some of Japan’s most popular artists, is also thinking about joining iTunes. The company, which pushes musicians signed not only with Sony but also others, had initially decided against signing with iTunes.
“But we are considering joining in the future,” Amuse spokeswoman Kyoko Ijichi said Wednesday. “We want to do what users want.”
Eddy Cue, Apple vice president of applications, acknowledged earlier this week that more work is needed to sign additional record companies for the Japanese service.
Tokyo-based recording company Victor Entertainment spokesman Yoshiaki Aoki said Wednesday talks are still continuing with Apple, but stressed he is interested in a deal.
Still, iTunes’ popularity in Japan has been stunning. The publicity campaign, including a rare personal appearance by Chief Executive Steve Jobs, has grabbed media attention here.
Before iTunes’ arrival, Japan’s top music download service, which is backed by Sony and includes Sony recording artists, averaged about 450,000 downloads a month.
By offering its service for lower prices, Apple is undercutting such online music services. Japanese are accustomed to paying twice as much as Apple is charging in Japan, which are still higher than the 99 cents charged in the U.S.
Apple has sold 21.8 million iPods worldwide since it went on sale in October 2001, and more than 500 million songs through its iTunes Music Store.
MCCFR: Given MS’ past behavior, don’t you think there might be some fine print in that WMA license about MS co-marketing funds disappearing if you are “too closely identified with Apple and iTunes Music Store”?
Apple sold 219000 iPods in Q1 of FY2003. So sales just about tripled from one Christmas to the next once iTunes for Windows became available.
OpJ: Apple’s chosen method is to let the iPod (or iTunes on the Mac or Windows PC) be the music renderer for any ancillary device. In other words I can dock my iPod with an Onkyo stereo, Bose speakers, car stereo, etc, and hear my music. The only point on which I agree with you is the lack of a remote control for such an attached iPod. I bet by MacWorld Paris, this little problem will be taken care of. Let’s revisit the situation after then.
And please, there’s no need to be nasty or condescending to those responding to your points. You only make yourself look bad.
How depressing…it just occured to me that these whiners (they don’t deserve to be called competitors) are probably going to take the low road that is so f’n popular today and sue Apple to give up their DRM exclusivity and let everone have their “fair share of the pie”.
Anyone ever try buying and downloading a song from BuyMusic.com? I won a free song from Del Taco. Using VirtualPC (since Macs aren’t supported), I spent 20 minutes trying to download one song! It took me 3-4 minutes just to find the song I was searching for because their search engine pulls up not only songs, but books, CDs, and all kinds of crap. Then I can only play it in VirtualPC b/c Microsoft hasn’t released Windows Media 10 for Mac (and probably won’t).
Why the hell do I want to deal with BuyMusic.com when I can find my song (in the nice, pleasing, easy-to-navigate interface of iTunes), download via One Click, and be listening to my song in less than 1 minute total time? No wonder iTunes and iPod dominate the market.
@ FUDDY:
Thanks for adding that last statistic, much appreciated – in the spreadsheet that I maintain already.
And to add to your comment addressed to OpJ, I would go and have an look at the work of Open Peak (http://www.openpeak.com) and in particular here at http://www.openpeak.com/news_release_98.html (sorry, I can’t remember how to embed links at MDN): I see a fully-functional iTunes/Airport Express coming – the only question is whose badge is going to be on the damn thing.
I really resent your equating my Window Media Audio with maple syrup.
iPodDN MW: “quality” (What’s that, exactly?)
Hi. It’s been ten and a half hours.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain why it is a good thing for me, or any other consumer, that Apple won’t license Fairplay.
Tick tock tick tock.
Anyone?
I see these whiners are indirectly promoting Microsoft. The claim that the market would grow if only Apple would get out of the way is just a theory. If Apple moved out of the way they don’t know that Microsoft’s monopoly wouldn’t drive the market into the ground.
Personally I’m starting to think that DRM is a bad idea. It’s the greedy music business pimps trying to corral a good thing. Instead they’re going to kill it.
The biggest drawback to Microsoft and its WMA-DRM (PlaysForSure hyperbole) is its Windows-only nature, hence not available or compatible on Mac, Linux and/or Amiga!
OpJ,
My customer’s (I’m a shareholder) in general are VERY happy with the current situation. I never expected my company to please everyone, especially the competition.
Can you explain why it is not in Apple’s best interest (and mine) to diverge from the status quo and license Fairplay at this time, rather that hold out until if/when it is necesarry?
Tick tock tick tock…
OpJ?
sorry…
Why it is in Apple’s best interest (and mine) to diverge from the status quo and license Fairplay at this time, rather than hold out until if/when it is necesarry?
OpJ:
Why is it Apple’s job to meet your demands? Why does anybody here have to answer for Apple?
But I’ll take the bait.
My best guess is that Apple’s doing what it thinks is best for consumers, the music execs, the artists, and itself/shareholders. You know, tradeoffs. MDN obviously thinks Apple has the best solution so far. I agree. Will something better emerge? Let’s hope so and vote for the best opportunities with our dollars.
Hello.
It’s been fifteen and a half years.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain why it is a good thing for ME, or any other ‘consumer’ (a true M$ word), that M$ won’t license xls; doc; or ppt.
Tick tock tick tock.
Anyone?
–
PS. Apple has CUSTOMERS, Micro$oft has CONSUMERS. It’s too bad so many don’t ‘get’ this…
MDN, your comments are stupid. Please try to retain an aire of professionalism. Thank you.
Shaun,
Are you serious?
Hey,
I’ll bet everything that I own with any AppleHater, that if your beloved M$ was in the position that Apple was in – regarding digital music – you wouldn’t utter one fscking word about ‘incompatibility’. Your attitude would be, “Oh, It’s Apple’s DUTY to comply with the ‘industry ‘STANDARD'”.
Yeah, whatever. Whatever rules you need to ensure that ‘your team’ ALWAYS wins. Invertebrates like you, are far too fragile to actually COMPETE – thus the ever changing rulebook.
BTW, are industry standards only applicable if set by Micro$oft – a twice convicted ILLEGAL monopolist? Please use whatever form of revisionism or justification you need to, to bolster your flaccid argument.
–
Anyway, ‘Artisticulated’ is correct… Apple’s currently doing what it thinks is best for customers, the music execs, the artists, and itself/shareholders. You know… tradeoffs.
FactA
Aug 13, 05 – 10:21 pm
Hello.
It’s been fifteen and a half years.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain why it is a good thing for ME, or any other ‘consumer’ (a true M$ word), that M$ won’t license xls; doc; or ppt.
Tick tock tick tock.
Anyone?
–
PS. Apple has CUSTOMERS, Micro$oft has CONSUMERS. It’s too bad so many don’t ‘get’ this…
I love the response! The ultimate reply to comments about Microsoft being “Open”
themax-x Question?
WhY DOESN’t the music industry promote itunes music store?
Because, how will they get us to buy their unholy expensive CDs.