“Michael Nash, Warner’s digital strategy chief, suggested labels might have no choice other than cut Apple’s digital music sales off at a stroke,” Andrew Orlowski reports for The Register. “‘What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download – what then? The industry can say, OK we’ll cut him of – very few people people buy music from digital downloads,’ said Nash, who pointed out that most of the music on iPods is from their own collections. The iPod won’t disappear, he pointed out, and the decapitation will really feel no more painful than a gentle shave. ‘[Jobs] will figure out another model,’ said Nash… His comments came at the CTIA Telecomms Show, in a panel titled ‘Artists, Labels, Publishers: What Do License Holders Want.'”
Nash also said, “The industry got together and said ‘We don’t want another MTV’. Well, now we’ve got another MTV, in Apple. And we have to deal with it.” And an unnamed executive stated, “It’s going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead,” Orlowski reports.
Full article here.
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these people really want to decapitate themselves
wow… stupidity on parade!
idiots
They just don’t get it. This has only just begun.
This Nash is a moron, ” most of the music on iPods is from their own collections ” ? Yeah, that may be true for some people, but my sons, 14 and 12 years old, downloaded more than 50 songs from iTune and they never buy any CD from the store before!!! That’s why Apple sold more than 500 million , get this Nash, 500 millions songs and counting!!!
Unbelievable! Certainly, downloaded music now only represents about 5% of their sales, but it is obviously the future as far as growth potential and buying habits of the next generations of consumers. And can you believe this quote further on down in the article?
””It’s going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead,” said one executive.”
Talk about understatement of the millennium! These guys are clueless.
Magic Word is “left” as in the record companies have been left behind because of their own delusions.
Jobs will have figure out another model? It seems like he has figured out another model and the record companies are deluded to think that they can come up with a better model.
PBS “Nightly Business Report” doing series of segments on music business. Last night lots of info on indies and downloads. Musician saying “iTMS downloads have paid my mortgage for months.”
Another guy I think IN the industry saying, “Downloads are going to replace CD sales like CD replaced vinyl.” (paraphrased)
THIS quote following above: “And I’m not talking 5-10 yrs down the line. I’m saying 1-2 yrs.”
Watch that wave guys; you can surf it or get drowned.
MW: “future”. (self-explanitory)
I’m just shy of 500 songs from the iTunes store. Its the only way I buy my music now. I guess the record companies are willing to let customers like me twist in the wind. Pity.
First things first: why does the Register employ 12 year olds to write their articles? They are so hard to read, and they take ridiculously circuitious routes to what are fairly straightforward points.
Next, from TFA, from some exec: “It’s going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead,” said one executive.”
This is some kind of NewSpeak to be sure, but i think it translates roughly to “… i’m a douche-bag …”
As i have said before, Apple hands them a revenue stream, helps them turn CD sales around, and their response is to try to cut them out of the loop.
The only people who don’t like the 99c model are the people making the most money out of it. Riddle me that one …
It is obvious to the labels that they are very vulnerable. Would this bonehead throw that card at Walmart who sells far more music than Apple? Nope, but Walmart doesn’t have the balls to make a move to eliminate them – Apple is positioning perfectly to facilitate their own brand. No band needs a label then. That is the sound of panic in a punks voice.
Music industry execs genuinely believe they are the shapers of contemporary culture, and are thus entitled to view anybody and anything else as merely consumers or tools to be used to sell more records. They have completely forgotten that people want to own their music, and that music is such an integral part of peoples’ lives that the very idea of simply renting it is almost repulsive. That may change in generations to come, but not for the next 10 years. If they think they can turn the music industry into a ring-tone business charging $3 a pop for something you can buy on-line for a 1/3 of that, they’re in for a nasty surprise.
Unfortunately, the mobile phone industry has managed to delude the music execs even further, and convinced them that mobile-based music is the way forward, at excessive prices controled by unuseable DRM schemes. Until the mobile industry is proved wrong (which IMO will take about 3 years) the music industry will continue to dream that it can sell individual tracks at $3 each, and view a 99c price-point as an anathema to be left behind as soon as possible. However, there’s no way Warner, or anyone else, would unilaterally withdraw from iTunes and see its sales drop off the online music charts. Its just noise.. the noise of a bunch of overpaid egos strutting around in their cages, showing off to one another in a way that only music execs can, unaware that they’re going to be slaughtered.
circuitous
what a knob job this guy is !
I will never pay a subscrption fee to download music, looks like the music exec’s want piracy to come back for a while then want to jump in bed with MS to try and save the day. They are nuts
The music industry needs to look at another industry that’s been affected by the digital transformation of an industry & the digital revolution.
How many people still own & regularly use film based cameras? It seems l ike everyone has a digital camera (be it high end or low end). When was the last time you took a film camera in for development?
Take Kodak for example. They could have paniced and feared the digital revolution when film camera sales declined. They could have paniced when film developing declined. Did they assault the customers with anti-digital propoganda? No. Did they fight back in a positive way, which helped develop an industry that’s just as powerful as it always was if not MORE SO? Yes and hell yes!
Every Kodak printer and camera in the digital realm was designed to help assist the user in faster & easier prints. They realized film was declining and stepped up development of more advanced printers, card readers in printers, paper, cameras that connect TO the printers (no need for even a computer if you want).
Kodak fought their battle in a possitive way with the customers at home. They also got into the field of kiosks with helping customers walk into any convience store (Walgreens in my area for example) and scan and print directly AT the store. You can off load your digital prints AT the store and develop them in an hour or less. Every time I am in Walgreens, those kiosks are being used!!
Kodak’s attitude towards embracing an oncoming technology should be the model for the music industry. Don’t fear change, embrace it!!
Don’t fight progress, it alienates your customers and stifles legitimate sales. Bite the bullet, and help be a leader in the digital revolution in your industry.
Unbelieveable idiots.
They are soooo self absorbed….they dont even think about the people, tha fans. All they see is Steve Jobs and $$. Sheesh!
A possible “new model” is to simply bypass the infestation that is the known as a “label”. Labels do less good and more damage as technology advances. Without labels the price could actually have a chance to go as low as 29 cents.
These comments by Nash are paranoid considering lablels like his set the high 99 cent price in the first place. Apple only makes a few cents that much per tunes (labels definitely make more than that), and they don’t want to lose money on each track if they can help it. Thus tunes will only be 29 cents if increased iPod sales make it wothwhile (the paranoid nightmare of Nash).
We don’t hear the other beneficiaries of the iTunes store like the credit card processors and Akamai (of which Apple own’s a part) wanting to dictate higher “more flexible” prices.
Another model is for Apple to become a “label” themselves. That should get the attention of the Beatles.
What if Jobs says the record companies should pay the user for each song downloaded!? If you’re gonna talk about theoretical situations and concerns at least be realistic – Jobs has said they’re against increasing prices, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything mentioned about cutting them to less than a third of the price.
Now is the time to forge head first down the route of a one format digital download world, I’ll fully admit that apple can’t expect to and shouldn’t control digital downloads entirely but their model is the best – record companies should commit to it but get Fairplay to be opened up to licencees or something.
I prefer to buy used CDs. I get the music. A local shop gets revenue. Music companies get no additional revenue.
“Very few people buy music from digital downloads”. Hmm… just enough to buy 500 million songs. They can eliminate iTunes, but it won’t change their sales margins. You’ll just see 500 million more downloads from peer-to-peer.
The music industry can strut and cackle all it wants. I’m not buying another CD. Ever. I can get my music legally through iTunes, or illegally through peer-to-peer. There aren’t enough lawyers on the planet to prosecute every Tom, Dick, and Downloader.
It’s time the music industry either faces the future or gets steamrolled by it.
Listen Warner Music is a company headed by a idiot.
The whole movie industry is laughing at him, the rest of the music labels can’t be taking him seriously.
http://slate.msn.com/id/1862/
“It’s going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead,”
Divx failed with that marketing model.
(That is, Divx the home video format, not the codec stupidly named after it. “Not to be confused with the defunct home video format.”)
Scared. Seriously scared. And I actually don’t blame them for it. The new model will ultimately move bypass the record companies entirely. Then it won’t be 99c. or 33c, it’ll be nought cents.
Because they were:
– shortsighted
– lacking in imagination
– stuck in their ways
– greedy
and above all:
– ungrateful for the lifeline Jobs/Apple threw them. Or perhaps they don’t even recognise it as a lifeline?
Doesn’t sound to me like much will save them now…
The sooner that the labels themselves are decapitated the better…and it will happen, the only question is how soon. If the labels cut off Apple, the artists will start bypassing the labels knowing that they aren’t really needed any longer anyway.
So, these idiots prefer to go back fighting illegal downloads. They won’t get a penny from those downloads and they will spend millions on lawyers … all for nothing since they can’t win this war. Apple is wining the war for them. What a bunch of short-sighted, money-grabbing, unscrupulous, incredibly stupid morons.