“It’s over. Restrictions on copying digital music are going to be history — and all hell could break loose in the music retail business,” Kevin Kelleher reports for TheStreet.com.
MacDailyNews Take: Kevin, what is this, February 6, 2007? Or it is April 2, 2007? Whichever it is, welcome to the party. Finally.
Kelleher continues, “Amazon.com’s move to sell more than 2 million songs free of digital rights management software, or DRM, could well be seen several years from now as the point of no return for this controversial technology.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, it could be, Kevin, but only if you totally ignore February 6, 2007 and April 2, 2007.
Kelleher continues, “The days of music companies telling consumers when and how they can listen to their songs are numbered.”
MacDailyNews Take: Kevin’s a newsman. It’s just old news that he prefers. Just how much of February 6, 2007 did you sleep through, all of it?
Kelleher continues, “Amazon’s move is — to lean on that useful but overused buzz phrase — a tipping point. DRM is a well-intentioned idea that served to drive many music consumers away.”
MacDailyNews Take: Kevin, the tipping point occurred on April 2, 2007 as precipitated by the event that happened on February 6, 2007. Yes, we know. You slept in.
Kelleher continues, “One of the biggest beneficiaries of DRM has been Apple. As Daniel Del’Re pointed out in his coverage of the Amazon announcement, when people buy songs on iTunes, ‘the only portable music device on which users can play back songs is the iPod.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Kevin, which part of the following did you not understand exactly?
…Abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat… Convincing [the music labels] to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs on, you guessed it, February 6, 2007
Furthermore, have Mac and PC notebooks with iTunes been reclassified as “non-portable” devices, Kevin? If not, then iPods have never been the only portable music devices on which users can play back music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Store. It certainly felt portable enough listening to iTunes Store music on a MacBook Pro while cruising at 30,000 feet on our last plane trip, Kevin. Of course, simply burning a CD from iTunes (iTunes is a software application, Kevin, it differs from the iTunes Store which is actually an online service accessed via the iTunes application) and either playing that CD on a portable CD player (is that a “portable” enough music device, Kevin?) or reimporting it into other also-ran MP3 players also proves the utter fallacy of your and Daniel Del’Re’s statement.
Kelleher continues, “In that way, DRM has served as a retaining wall for Apple, keeping the owners of 100 million iPods sold to date within the iTunes corral when they buy music. (Well, most of them. Our house is home to three iPods, and we have yet to buy a single song through iTunes for this very reason.)”
MacDailyNews Take: Kevin, our not-too-bright friend, if you have 3 iPods and you’ve never bought a single song from the iTunes Store, then — unless you’ve never listened to music on any of your iPods — then you’ve just conclusively proven that iPod owners are in no way “corralled” into buying music from the iTunes Store. Logic is your friend, Kevin. So is chronological order. Try them both someday.
Of course, if you hadn’t missed February 6, 2007, you would have read Steve Jobs’ letter which explained quite clearly, “Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold. Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store… It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.”
Kelleher continues ignorantly congratulating Amazon and misunderstanding what’s really happening in his full piece, Think Before You Click™, here.
byeTunes,
You’re stupid enough to get a job with TheStreet. Give it a try.
Amazon may yet replace Apple in the #3 spot.
This matters not.
What matters is that DRM is dead and dying.
What matters is that Micros**t’s media format is not being used.
The halo effect was the ploy from day one. And it worked.
Mac sales are what most matters most, and they’re storming.
The iPod/iTunes phenomenon has lasted far longer than anyone ever hoped, and Apple keeps the heat on with the latest models (160Gb for crying out loud!!).
Nobody buys an iPod for iTunes, and that’s why the Amazon music store will help, not hurt Apple.
Finally, I have personal experience with ‘journalists’, either directly or regarding subjects with which I am intimately familiar.
In every single instance they have ignored and distorted plain facts and promoted their own liberal agenda.
I find it verrrry interesting that 99.% of journalists are liberals.
hey, who likes me?
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Yeah What a shame huh, anyway new macs soon ) yeah.
I may get my macbook from the ebay trader, I have talked to police.
vista hahahh
hhaha keeps me going When I get upset i think of vista and that search function LOL
hahah vista melista
“Actually iTunes is the #3 distributer of music in the US behind Best Buy and Walmart and well ahead of Amazon”
Interesting that you think US Sales = Whole World Sales.
Next you’ll be quoting that Apple sells 100% of the computers in America with a picture of a fruit on it.
emusic.com (the world’s 2nd largest online music distributor) was issuing DRM-free music *long* before Steve Jobs woke up to the idea.
byeTunes, lets see a link proving that Amazon is a “bigger player in the music business than Apple will ever be” US, Canada, worldwide, whatever..
Apple is #1 in digital distribution in every market that they compete in and rapidly growing. Online distribution of music is rapidly outpacing physical distribution and will very soon eclipse the worldwide sales of CDs, this is really only a few years away. Apple clearly is in the forefront here with an online WIFI music store you can link up to their latest iPod touch.
Amazon is a great store, and I expect their MP3 store to do well, but it remains the most common thing people do with MP3s is put them on portable music players, which are iPods over anything else by a wide margin, and while I’m glad Amazon is in the game, they require an extra step for iPod users, and without a compelling advantage they’ll likely be distant also-rans.
@Reality Check
Apple helped distribute “free” music before emusic.com by including internet radio in iTunes along with popularizing Podcasts.
Emusic sells DRM free music from smaller labels, Apple was the first to offer DRM free songs from a major record label EMI.
MDN “before” as in Apple was before Amazon with DRM free major label songs.
But in reality file sharing networks have been distributing DRM free songs by all the major record labels and far longer than either Apple or Emusic (or newcomer Amazon).
“without a compelling advantage they’ll likely be distant also-rans.”
Advantage 1: Millions more customers than iTunes already used to buying stuff from them. about 70 million people are a few clicks away from being able to try the Amazon service.
Advantage 2: Generic MP3 files, frees your collection from on specific brand of player, and insulates you against something bad happening to Apple in the next several decades over which you may wish to own your music.
Advantage 3: Works with all media players on the market with no need to mess around stripping DRM, converting files etc.
Advantage 4: better prices.
Advantage 5: Better quality for the price.
Advantage 6: No harder to use than iTunes, and is just as easy for both iTunes and Windows Media Player users.
Amazon seems to have looked at Steve’s first iteration of a music store, examined all that he did wrong, and done it right for their version.
“Apple is #1 in digital distribution in every market that they compete in and rapidly growing. “
Interesting you think it’s that way.
Broadcast TV companies and cable TV companies are actually #1 in digital distribution of TV programs and content.
Illegal file sharing sites are #1 in distribution of Internet downloadable music and movies, by a huge margin.
Even Apple admits that they distribute through iTunes less than 3% of the content that ends up on iPods.
At 3% you’re calling them the dominant player? What next? Predictions that Macs will take over the world because they have less than 3% worldwide share?
No matter what people want to try to argue over semantics – it is a fact that the iTunes store and the iTunes store alone has proven that people WILL buy songs online given consistent rules for playback of music, a reasonable price and good selection. DRM or no DRM most people do not care. Most people just want it to play on their iPod.
Who cares if itunes store, amazon or joes blow online songs.net is #1 in whatever – the fact is that the iTunes store has proven that online music distribution is here to stay.
The popularity of the iPod and the iTunes store has forced record labels to go to DRM free music in an effort to break people from the iTunes store. The labels never predicted the success of the iTunes store and now they want to be able to control their own pricing online. Forcing some type of competition to the iTunes store is the only way for that to happen.
So yes – iTunes store is dominant, as of now, in the overall scheme of things.
“the fact is that the iTunes store has proven that online music distribution is here to stay. “
The reality is that Apple provided the first somewhat commercially successful GUI based computer operating systems, but have been relegated to a place of insignificance in that market with Microsoft taking the lion’s share.
The same will happen here with Apple showing the path, but screwing the pooch (as they always do) and surrendering the market to others.