“Steve Jobs helped save the music biz from file sharers like Shawn Fanning and Wayne Rosso. Now Fanning and Rosso–the creator of Napster and former president of Grokster, respectively–want to save the labels from Jobs. Apple’s iTunes store practically created the music-downloads business, and according to NPD controls 70% of online sales. Says Rosso: ‘Steve Jobs has them by the balls.’ Rosso now heads a file-sharing service called Mashboxx, which bought Grokster’s assets and plans to start selling authorized downloads by summer. It has deals with Universal Music and Sony BMG and is negotiating with EMI and Warner Music. The service will be powered by Snocap, a system Fanning designed that lets peer-to-peer networks filter out ‘stolen’ files,” Robert Levine reports for Fortune.
“Rosso, 57, an almost cartoonishly outspoken former publicist, is spoiling for a fight. ‘Steve Jobs and Apple are going to be toast,’ he says. ‘There’s going to be a completely different landscape.’ Toast, maybe not–but the game may well change, if only because of two other entrants: MTV and Amazon.com,” Levine reports. “The former will launch Urge, an online store that sells music in Windows Media format, by summer. And Amazon (Research) will reportedly start a service that could include its own music player.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Blah, blah, blah. Too. Many. iPods. Substitute “BuyMusic.com” for any of the “iTunes Killers” above to find out how this oft-told story will end.
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These guys better watch out or Sim Wong Hoo is gonna get them for copyright infringement of his battle cries!
Selling digital popular music is not profitable.
As someone wisely posted sometime ago …
iTunes killer ??? …. actually it is iTunes, killer
As my wife said tonight, “I see your lips moving but all I hear is ‘blah ba blah ba blah.'”
Big words. Is he going to huff, and puff, and blow Steve’s house down too?
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time
There’s something wrong here
There can be no denying
One of us is changing
Or maybe we’ve just stopped trying
And it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it
It used to be so easy living here with you
You were light and breezy
And I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy
And I feel like a fool
And it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
and I can’t hide it
And I just can’t fake it
There’ll be good times again for me and you
But we just can’t stay together
Don’t you feel it too
Still I’m glad for what we had
And how I once loved you
And it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and
I can’t hide it I just can’t fake it
Don’t you know that I…
I just can’t fake it
Oh it’s too late my baby
Too late my baby
You know
It’s too late my baby
MacDude
oopps sorry for the long post *belch*
I think I’m going to start my own digital music download service. I’m going to call it MusicGetterRulez.com and it’s going to be fantastic. Jobs is going to cry when he finds out. It’s going to kill the iPod killers, followed shortly by the iPod itself. I don’t have any facts to back up this claim, but you’ve read it here on the internet, so it must be true.
My business plan is flawless:
1) Launch digital music store.
2) Defeat iTMS.
I know where the others have gone wrong and failed. They left off step two!! How dumb was that?
Well if their software solution (hence iTunes killer) is a Windows-only affair, then we’ll be waiting until doomsday for that toast to pop from the toaster!
Just buy your music from allofmp3.com and you don’t have to worry about DRM or having your music locked to one particular type of player, be it Microsoft or Apple. Plus its cheaper.
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Buy from allofmp3.com ONLY if you like to steal from the artists and want to support a site based in Russia!
^ And if you’re comfortable with your credit eventually being manipulated by the Russian mob.
As Amy Poehler said recently on SNL when she was playing Kelly to Daryl Hammond’s Regis . . .
“Regis, when you say those things all I hear is blordy blorp blorp blordy bloop.”
I still don’t get why anyone buys music ffom any of these services. The quality is terrible. Buy the CD and if you think it is one song with filler, copy it and resell it. No DRM. High quality sound. Plays on any future player that may be better than iPod some day. Which will happen. Ask GM, IBM, Sony, and I hope Microsoft in the near future about being number 1 forever.
(With Apologies to Yogi)
Virgin, Sony, Coca Cola (?!), BuyMusic.con, Napster, Real, Dell, Rio, Creative, Wal-Mart, Micro$oftopoly and probably the guy who fixes your car have all had the same target–Apple & the iPod and all have already failed or are getting their a*s roundly kicked. Sony tried to play hardball with Apple in their home market (Japan) and now Apple has over 50% of the market less than a year in.
Yes, I put Micro$oftopoly in as they qualify twice. (1) they make the world’s worst media player (WiMP-Windoze Media Player) and (2) They own a music store so exclusive that Ballmer’s kid is the only one who uses it.
Would you like to join this distinguished club of iTunes/iPod wannabes? A new office has opened to help you get in the biz, as it were. Send your money to:
There’s One Born Every Minute
1 P.T. Barnum Square
New York, New York
Is MDN near the point of barring Macdude? Getting sillier and more pointless by the minute. I actually think he’s a massive troll, playing games.
Diamond,
Maybe you don’t get it. You’re suggestion is piracy and just plain immoral. It’s illegal to buy, copy then resell. Most of us don’t mind supporting the artists who create the music we enjoy.
Or maybe you’re just sarcastically quoting that “one billion suckers served” jackass from a week ago.
Notice how these clowns have to resort to making loud statements just for the sake of publicity? Since Apple is in the limelight, making ridiculous statements related to them almost always gets them read. Another good example of this: John C. Dvorak.
Macdude = Triumph = Sputnik.
See British expression “winding you up” for an explanation and a description of the (desired) effect on you. You’re making his day…
The ipod is a fashion…and fashion changes like the winds. Don’t be at all surprised if in a couple of years the ipod line will not be doing stellar sales, but then no-one else will either.
So the ipod and ITMS is a huge and very successful marketing strategy that has brought Apple massive market presence, has established hundreds of stores across the free world and created a huge cash-flow.
Where would Apple be now if it wasn’t for the ipod?
So Apple keeps innovating and they have a game plan and they know the iPod and the music downloads will not sustain their growth forever.
Hence they have the ‘next’ thing already in the pipline, be it movies, TV shows etc.
SJ said a long time ago he wanted Apple to be the next ‘Sony’.
I can never figure out Macdud either. It reminds me of the little tutle talking to Marlin in Finding Nemo….. “I know he’s trying to talk to me, I just know it” I also think he is just a troll.
Apple is moving to assure lock in. The Intel Mac Mini is at the heart of it. The way it ties wirelessly to the network, with Bonjour, with Front Row, with the Apple Remote, to iTunes, with full 5.1 sound is making the Apple iPod/iTunes value proposition — to use the stilted talk of business BSers — ever more convincing. Apple is using its chess like positioning and advantage in pieces on the board to put its wannabe competitors into hopeless positions. When Apple gets key agreements with the vendors (and Burst.com — don’t forget them!), It should start advertising the ease of use of the Apple iMedia (obvious name guess) architecture in the living room, in ways that its soon to be erstwhile competitors cannot. Apple ought to be able to stomp its competitors into the ground before any anti trust trial can start. Hey, it worked for Microsoft (the one thing MS is actual good at).
Yesss! Definitely a troll.
Definitely a troll. An usually annoying to boot.
Jake
It could be worse. Napster were Toast, but some idiot sold the company and put all the money into a WMA music store.
BTW, why the call to ban MacDude? Apple is changing as a company, and a little cynicism from the user base is needed to stop them becoming a controlling behemoth á la Microsoft. A lot of what MacDude says is relevant, at least to those of us not living in Cupertinofantasycheerleaderland.