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“The music industry hopes to benefit from a battle for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google as both technology giants go head-to-head in a wide range of media and consumer technology areas including online TV and movies, mobile phones, software and even advertising,” Adegoke reports. “Music is the latest area they are likely to compete in even though Apple had a major head-start on Google, with its 7-year dominance through iTunes Music Store, which accounts for 70 percent of all U.S. digital music sales.”
Adegoke reports, “Google has yet to sign any licensing deals with major labels, these people say, but it hasn’t stopped the labels getting excited about the prospect of its entry to the business and what competition with iTunes could mean for the industry.”
“Music executives have long believed having other competing powerful digital music retailers could help expand the market,” Adegoke reports. “While digital album sales are up 13 percent year-to-date from the year-ago period, sales of individual songs have held steady, according to Nielsen SoundScan.”
MacDailyNews Take: If the dumbass music cartels hadn’t forced Apple to up new tracks to $1.29 in exchange for dropping the labels’ beloved DRM, then individual song sales would have increased instead. In fact, the labels are damn lucky they held steady.
Adegoke reports, “But just being big won’t be enough even for a company of Google’s size and capabilities. Leading online retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched its MP3 store in 2007 but still only has just over 12 percent market share. ‘We’re cautiously optimistic because Google has great scale and reach but doesn’t have a track record in selling stuff,’ said another label executive who declined to be named as the talks are still ongoing.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Music execs, before you get too excited, please see the related articles below. Now, what the hell are you guys dreaming of, exactly? Playing Apple against a Google or some other mythical competitor is going to achieve what? $1.49 tracks? $1.79? $1.99? The return of DRM, perhaps? Forced bundling, sorry, “album-only” sales? What, exactly? What’s this oh-so-coveted “competition” supposed to deliver to the music industry? A lessening of Jobs’ wise guidance and influence?
Be careful what you wish for, music cartels: Jobs saved (and every day continues to save) your asses and everything that you idiots dream up on your own fails miserably.
Can Anyone Say Bit Torrent??? People will not bend to Huge Companies that are Greedy.
The music guys are hoping that they can get companies like google and Apple to pay them for the “privilege” to have access to there music. They know that the consumer isn’t going to pay them anymore. So now they want to go after the business to pay for it.
That’s the great thing about competition. It drives prices up. Wait, what? Oh. Dang it.
This is why the music labels killed music, because music to them, is nothing but a commodity.
Apple has soul.
All I can say is that I will never by an entire album again. Not for any artist. SO bring it on. I spent almost 1,000.00 last year on singles, TV and movies.
I am thinking there are many out there that do the same.
Change the model and I will go back to buying about one or two albums a year.
I have also noticed that I think twice with the $1.29 model. I used to never think twice when all were .99. Just my buying habits or for some reason $1.29 appears a lot more expensive to me.
When will they learn that Google is like a blind octopus, grasping at anything and everything that everyone else is doing in the vain hope of controlling all the www’s content and how we access it.
First it was M$’s office & email programs then it was a web browser to compete against IE, Safari, Firefox & Opera
Closely followed by Android, a facebook alternative Google.me obviously copying mobileme.
They have dabbled into alternative forms of energy research, registered themselves as an energy supplier. Are in the process of trying to hijack the internet with verizon as their stooge.
Have bolstered various governments around the world whose efforts are aimed at denying their citizens free access to the internet thus allowing their own gmail to be hacked.
Are facing lawsuits direct and indirectly from former willing partners from whom they have espionaged their intellectual property. This is the saviour them “rich fat bastrads” of the recording industry are quietly rooting for. Sheeeeesh!!!!!
Just goes to show the limited mental faculty this bulwarks of the “rape & pillage” our artists industry bosses have.
So Goggle is going to pay the record companies more than Apple or Amazon?
Huh?
Apple doesn’t really care who sells the music, as long as the music can be played on all iDevices and Macs. That’s where the $$$ are.
@Mike
Ditto on the $1.29. My iTunes purchasing came to screeching halt with that one. A 30% price increase is substantial for any product. And while 1.29 won’t buy a cup of coffee any more, it is still too much for me to go back to snapping up dozens of songs at time at the iTunes Store. At 99¢ it felt like a no-risk proposition to grab a track. And now, like you say, you’ve got to think about it. Took the fun right out of the experience.
Music is and has always been an integral part of Apple’s DNA, Apple users for the most part are similarly inclined.
The day the labels get that, is the day they will realize that Apple saved their ass once and is the only company that has the right ingredients and fanfare to do it. Apple can make them irrelevant and actually is already, by giving musicians and fans the tools and technology to take control of all aspects of music by bypassing the big business exploiters.
Google will never have that level of passion and is too focused on control.
I really don’t like pirating music. I want high quality files and I want the artists I like to get the money they deserve. But if prices go up any more than they are right now and if more “bundling” is forced on us, I just won’t support the industry anymore. Pirating will be my only option.
Tony:
Support the artists, go to their live gigs, concerts and buy their CDs and products direct. Keep Music Live.
live gigs?
Unpleasant, smelly, people, stoned and drunk, yelling and screaming, fights and general mayhem.
No thanks.
Oh I forgot the ‘products’. You must mean ugly T-shirts with adverts for the bands latest album on the front.
Hmmm. Shouldnt they pay ME for advertising their crap?
Why is western modern culture such a pile of dung?
Drek in Milan:
You sterile amoeba, stay in Milan asshole, ifvyou don’t support the music makers you wont have music – dick.
Rock’n’roll says we don’t need your type and youbprpvably feel entitled to our music dor free – that’s just as bad if not worse than the parasite labelxcthat exploit the working musicians that make tgr music. You are a yuppie worm or less.
@Derek the foreigner:
You wouldn’t know the first thing about a good concert, getting stoned or appreciating a concert from your attitude. We make music so that people can enjoy it and have a good social time listening to it. We’ve learned the lessons of being beholdent to the ripoff record labels and therefore support ourselves by independently recording our music and selling CDs at our shows. We also sell T shirts and post cards to keep Us going. This I’d our livelihood. Thank good we have the support of our fans who appreciate our music. You don’t deserve music in your life with an attitude like yours.
If the labels get too greedy, I get my stuff for free at bee music etc.
I live from selling my music, but mostly thru an old medium, called concert. Recordings are just for promo. But that is the “classical” scene. Anyway, most “popstars” are anyway overpaid.
I don’t get why people think google is so great, while I like google, all their products other than search are half ass, and unfinished. If MS dumped ballmer and get a visionary as a ceo, android would be blow out of the water through lawsuits and people wanted a polished alternative to iPhone. I have and would not switch away from iPhone, but I am not a fanboy and realize that some people want an alternative.
But goolge ain’t it. Post Ballmer Microsoft will be. Plus if anyone could have taken out iTunes it would have been Amazon, after all it is on of the biggest online stores and it couldn’t do it, what would make you think a one trick pony like google would do it?
The other day, I wanted a Sum41 tune called “In Too Deep”. So, over to the iTunes store I went. This album is 10 years old. All the songs on this album were .99 cents Except “in too deep” and “Fat Lip” – they were 1.29. Nice. I used to buy lots and lots of music, even when it was DRMed. It’s a blatant ripoff when the two most popular songs on the album are priced higher. Don’t give me shit about demand, either because they are all digital downloads, so there are no “supply” issues… Its a simple matter of milking the listener on the “good songs” .. In effect, with examples like this, the labels are admitting that an album is no more than one or two good songs and the rest filler…… Bastards….
Derek in Milan has a point, blunt as it may be. People choose to support musicians in their own way, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a “social” thing. Music is NOT a social part of my life; I chose to buy and listen to what I want, and chose not to go to most shows because I find the entire experience annoying and unbearable. The whole “social”, herd-mentality aspect of the business is sickening to me, and I find it laughable and pathetic that the herd always seems to denigrate those with a contrary opinion. If that offends, too fucking bad.
Now, a good Rush show, where I can actually sit down and take in the music… I’ll pay for that…
As all good things in life, music should be free.