“Big changes are afoot for the iPod in the wake of the Beatles settlement — the iPod is about to become the new CD,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News.
Kahney writes, “On Monday, Apple Inc. and the Beatles’ Apple Corps announced that a 15-year legal spat over the ‘Apple’ trademark had been settled in Steve Jobs’ favor.”
“But the biggest news wasn’t mentioned at all in the joint press release: The new contract clears the way for Jobs to sell iPods loaded with music,” Kahney writes. “Who cares?”
“Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists’ catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs,” Kahney writes.
Kahney writes, “Apple was prevented from doing this until now by the 15-year-old contract between Apple Corps, the Beatles’ music company, and Apple Computer. This contract precluded Jobs’ Apple from acting as a music company and from selling CDs or ‘physical media delivering prerecorded content … (such as a compact disc of the Rolling Stones’ music).’
“Apple has been selling music as downloads for years, of course, but thanks to this clause, the company couldn’t sell an iPod with music already loaded onto it,” Kahney writes. “That’s why the U2 special-edition iPod ships with a voucher for downloading the band’s catalog online. The Beatles contract prevents Apple from pre-loading the U2 iPod with U2’s music.”
Kahney writes, “That is undoubtedly going to change. Apple will soon offer a range of iPods pre-loaded with tunes… It’s going to be the biggest change to the iPod since the iTunes online store debuted in 2002.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
NPD’s Crupnick: Beatles-iTunes deal ‘almost certain’ – February 05, 2007
Apple Inc. and The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. enter into new agreement – February 05, 2007
The Beatles to share the love with Apple’s iTunes Store on Valentine’s Day? – January 16, 2007
Apple close to offering Beatles music via iTunes Store – December 05, 2006
Fortune: Apple close to landing exclusive iTunes Store deal with The Beatles – November 27, 2006
The Beatles catalog to be available for download ‘soon’ – November 13, 2006
Apple will do ‘everything we can’ to lure The Beatles to iTunes Music Store – May 10, 2006
This is old news to me. My first gen iPod came preloaded with music when I bought it five years ago. Anyone else get their iPod preloaded way back then?
Doesn’t make sense to me to preload an iPod.
What’s the Advantage? They could just as easily give you an itunes card for buying any 10 songs you want when you buy an iPod. A VanHalen iTunes card?
?
Am I missing “the good thing”
Not gonna happin
Special Edition Yoko Ono iPod.
All white.
No screen.
One button that says “Yes”
Pre-loaded with 3 hours of Ono screaming from inside a burlap coffee sack.
The perfect gift for the couple you’d like to break up.
-c
Yeah, right.
This is from Wired, the rumor/speculation/technology fluff magazine for the technorati crowd.
I can see special edition iPods (like U2, the Beatles, etc), but it’s doubtful it would go beyond that. From everything I’ve read, people seem to prefer buying singles.
This is a very good point I hadn’t thought of.
The idea really is that this is a selling point, it’s about adding value to a product (in this case an iPod).
How about giving somebody a Shuffle for a Valentine’s present, with the top 40 songs on the day of your 1st date?
How about giving somebody a Shuffle for a birthday present, with the top 40 songs on the day you were born?
As other’s have said, how about giving somebody a Shuffle, with the whole catalog of their favourite artist?
This would be a good thing to give as a gift to someone who either isn’t very technically literate or has a slow connection, or the main reason, if you wanted them to play it as soon as they got it (minus an hour or so for charging).
Of course, you can also do that with a little work and some CDs easily – the new mix CD between is a mix shuffle. This will revolutize the way teens date. 😀
MW – cannot, I cannot see myself buying a specialized iPod.
When getting their new iPods, lots of people want to play it right away. They don’t enjoy the process of registering, downloading iTunes to their computers (if they don’t have it), burning songs, and then downloading them to their iPods. They want “instant gratification,” especially if the iPod is a gift.
Apple has offered lots of free music on iTunes, and there’s additional music from web sites that’s legally free. Apple could pre-load all this music onto every single iPod it sells.
When the user inserts his or her iPod into a computer for the first time, the user could be offered the chance to upload music from the iPod to the computer. Only the first time, since there is no other music on the iPod. Thereafter, all proceeds as usual.
That sounds dumb. Pre-loading music works for special editions, but iPod is not going to replace CDs no matter how cheap it can be produced. The idea of music download is to give people the freedom to choose tracks they want when they want without having to buy the whole album. Those tracks are conveniently available and can be easily browsed and put in playlists at any time from a media player. A lot of people rip their CDs and put them in the storage room. They are not going to replace stacks of CDs with stacks of low capacity iPods containing a single album. Also, CD stores are not going to replace CDs with low capacity iPods which are more expensive and Apple is not going to have an inventory nightmare tracking thousands of iPod models.
This guy tries to shoehorn iPods into the current flagging business model. Not gonna happen.
An 80 GB iPod STILL isn’t big enough to hold Frank Zappa’s entire works.
But, ChrissyOne, that one button has a toggle switch between “yes” and “number 9”.
@ Cubert
Take this iPod, bother, may it serve you well.
I just gave my 78 y/old Mom an iPod for Xmas so that she could listen to podcasts on topics of interest. She doesn’t even know what iTunes is, nor does she need to. Every few days she plugs it into Dad’s iMac – iTunes starts, podcasts update and download to the iPod. The iPod is set to shuffle and delete played tracks so all she needs to know is the play button and volume. I think she uses next/previous track but I’m not sure. She’s an insomniac and listens at night, can operate it in the dark when 40% asleep and loves it. When I visit next summer I’ll add and delete some ‘casts.
THis long story is meant to show that there are people who are happily technoignorant yet would get utility from an iPod that came pre-loaded. My 86 y/old dad is the classical buff and if I could give him one with 20 gig of Mozart and Benny Goodman he would probably use it. Since he’d use it for a couple hours a week that would last him a long time and I could update when I see him – one or two times a year.
Interesting possibility. But how would those pre-loaded songs be uploaded to the buyer’s computer? And would the pre-loaded iPod be Windows or Mac formatted?
Would there be a market for a company to purchase iPods and load them w/music? Would the RIAA get their knickers in a twist if the CDs were purchased and resold to the final consumer along w/the content loaded?
Probably.
Does anyone else remember the ‘Rip. Mix. Burn.’ days when your Mac came preloaded with music? Maybe something like this is in the works???
I seem to recall an OS 9 install. CD which included iTunes (pre-store and iPod days) and a bunch of sample songs preloaded into the library. BNL’s “If I Had a Million Dollars” was one of them.
@ Zune Tang
Not bad, but please get the close right:
Your potential. Our passion.
Only capitalize ‘Your’ and ‘Our’. Commas are out. Place a period after ‘potential’ and ‘passion’.
Otherwise, you’re on the right track.
Your potential. Our passion.
Will Apple Inc. start signing artists and replace the big music labels? If they do the artists will flock to Apple’s label because I can’t imagine Apple screwing the artists like the big labels do now.
Interesting. I didn’t know Apple had such a restriction. This is a great idea because it would allow people who don’t like using computers (or don’t have one that is recent enough to run iTunes) to enjoy using an iPod.
How about this? Customers can go to an Apple Store and use a special Mac “kiosk,” with a special simplified version of iTunes, to custom-load an iPod with their favorite songs (and other media). If they buy the iPod and load it at the same time, they get a discount on the total price of the iPod and the media. Later, they can come back with their iPod and buy some more songs at the Apple Store. This would allow people who don’t like to use computers to have the full iPod experience. And it would greatly expand Apple iPod/iTunes market by including a group of consumers who normally visit a physical store to buy CDs and DVDs. Now they are visiting a physical Apple Store instead.
Once again, Apple is the only company in the world with the products, services, and infrastructure to pull it off.
I like this idea. so much so that I thought I’d figure out some things.
I worked out that an album made up of 12 tracks (the average album lets say…) with the bitrate at 320kbps takes up 118.8 MB of disk space. leaving 9MB for software etc…
Coming from England I figured it out in £££’s. with the current price for an iPod shuffle being £55, I realised that a 128MB should only cost arount £7 (not taking into account the metal case which would stay the same price, therefore the cost for the unit may be slightly more). Now, if they pre-loaded the 320kbps tracks onto the shuffle and sold them for… £12-£15… thats only slightly more than an album over here (£7.99 approx.)
Thats not too shabby for a high quality album that speeds up the process of listening to music, compared with a scratchable, big, have-to-find-a-cd-player-to-use-one circular disc, its pretty compelling. Of course they would’nt ship headphones with them, unless they could make them really cheap, but everyone has iPod headphones kicking around anyway..!
This is entirely plausible in the next 1-2 years.
“The iPod killer” in its true meaning.
MW: Neither: “Neither the CD or the vast amount of MP3 makers managed to overcome the iPod.”
We will copy this idea and sell pre-loaded zunes with the sound of a toilet flushing.
Soon the major record labels will be paying Apple to pre-load sample songs of new artists without DRM. With this subsidy the price of such iPods will drop.
Hey Louispavlo Tescos have 256MB mp3 players for £4.99 so we are at that pricepoint.
“I don’t want 128kbs Beatles songs! Come on, Apple, up the quality.”
Well, bandwidth issues would at least no longer apply, so Apple could easily pre-load iPods with higher-fi music.
(I know, the record companies might not allow it yet, but this could get it step closer)
“Kahney writes, “Apple was prevented from doing this until now by the 15-year-old contract between Apple Corps, the Beatles’ music company, and Apple Computer. This contract precluded Jobs’ Apple from acting as a music company and from selling CDs or ‘physical media delivering prerecorded content … (such as a compact disc of the Rolling Stones’ music).'”
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Everyone is thinking WAY too small here. Apple could care less about pre-loading iPods with music- I think that’s ridiculous- people use iTunes so they don’t have to buy whole albums, let alone let someone choose 1000 or 5000 songs for them- that’s silly. Maybe a few themed ipods, but that is a niche product.
That is small potatoes.
This agreement ALLOWS APPLE TO GET INTO THE MUSIC BUSINESS- AS IN, BECOME A “RECORD LABEL” THEMSELVES- AS IN, CUT OUT THE BIG FOUR LABELS, CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN!
Don’t you get it? It allows Apple to sign artists, and sell their music exclusively on iTunes! the infrastructure is already in place, and they can sell directly on behalf of the artists, and pay them directly.
Exactly how many artists do you think would jump at the chance to cut out the RIAA bloodsuckers as their contracts expire, sell directly to consumers, and get their royalties directly from Steve Jobs! Do you think maybe they trust Steve a little more than they do the labels?
How cool would that be?