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acroyearA beautiful essay on the state of online music download stores today, Microsofts coming furray into that market (once again turning a large number of partners into competitors), and how things should pan out in the near future...
Best line, describing MTV's online store: "If their music store turns out anything like their cable channel, it won't have any actual music on it."
For myself, I have little to no interest in those stores and what they offer, because they all off what to me is the same crap. Only the best selling stuff is allowed to say selling the market, and the truth is that its an utterly wasted opportunity.
Its an online store, where there's no shelf-space, no shipping weight requirements, no problem of stuff not being sorted properly because in the christmas rush, the lazy-ass retail staff never bothered to clean up after the ignorant customers rampaged the place.
Its not the place to buy Pink Floyd. Its not the place to by The Beatles. That stuff still sells in stores (and at top prices; neither group has dropped to "bargain bin" prices at all). Its the place to buy stuff that the market otherwise has decided (excuse me, the LABEL has otherwise decided) isn't marketable. It doesn't cost a thing except a little labor to take something out of print (where you're the only place with the master recording), digitize it, shrink it down to a mp3/itune/wma, and put it up there. No its not going to sell a million downloads, but that's the point. You'll make money even with only a relative handful of sales.
So until they reconsider what they're selling, and offer up more than the already "top-selling" stuff (where if I wanted it, I've already got it, and if I don't want it, it ain't worth $0.99 a track anyways), I have no interest in those types of stores whatsoever.
Best line, describing MTV's online store: "If their music store turns out anything like their cable channel, it won't have any actual music on it."
For myself, I have little to no interest in those stores and what they offer, because they all off what to me is the same crap. Only the best selling stuff is allowed to say selling the market, and the truth is that its an utterly wasted opportunity.
Its an online store, where there's no shelf-space, no shipping weight requirements, no problem of stuff not being sorted properly because in the christmas rush, the lazy-ass retail staff never bothered to clean up after the ignorant customers rampaged the place.
Its not the place to buy Pink Floyd. Its not the place to by The Beatles. That stuff still sells in stores (and at top prices; neither group has dropped to "bargain bin" prices at all). Its the place to buy stuff that the market otherwise has decided (excuse me, the LABEL has otherwise decided) isn't marketable. It doesn't cost a thing except a little labor to take something out of print (where you're the only place with the master recording), digitize it, shrink it down to a mp3/itune/wma, and put it up there. No its not going to sell a million downloads, but that's the point. You'll make money even with only a relative handful of sales.
So until they reconsider what they're selling, and offer up more than the already "top-selling" stuff (where if I wanted it, I've already got it, and if I don't want it, it ain't worth $0.99 a track anyways), I have no interest in those types of stores whatsoever.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 09:30 am (UTC)i also don't believe in or support any of the "DRM" strategies, particularly because of how they drafted legislation to make it illegal for me to run any of them on linux. the more my own media is telling me to enter some pass-key to prove i'm me, the more i think this stuff is getting too complex for its own good.
consider if Apple went belly up (its been predicted before...). At some point, just like the Verisign experation that killed several online sites including Java applet security installs, there will be a point where all that material one might have on itunes will "expire", solely because of some arbitrary DATE somebody set on something, or because there's no support for getting a license system written for some new piece of hardware/software that replaces the ipod you already have...
you'll LOSE all that stuff because somebody else owns the rights to tell you where you can put it.
so i'm going to tell them where to put it instead, with my wallet.
finally, my musical tastes differ from the standard buying public too much these days.
i get most of what i listen to these days from online stores run by the artists themselves (Crimson, Marillion, Hackett, Big Country) or their independent labels directly (Inside Out for Flower Kings and Transatlantic, for example). i'm also audiophile enough to believe that "cd-quality" mp3s (and their proprietary equivs) aren't.
XM Radio and internet radio sources like Live365 are the best ways for me to find new stuff to consider.
Re: More on iTMS
Date: 2004-01-27 06:04 pm (UTC)You can make unlimited burns of your music to CD-R. The only limitation is that a playlist can only be burned 10 times, then you must make a modification to the playlist to burn the playlist again (such as adding or deleting a song)
a stupid restriction, given that once i have a cd, i can with other software make as many copies of it as i want. any restriction only there to make the stupid feel secure and so easily bypassed by the smart just shouldn't have been there in the first place.
and hell, once i have a cd, what stops me from ripping it to mp3s anyways and still trading the stuff on kazaa or whatever.
they're still 1) artificial restrictions that are independent of the music involved, and 2) as with other anti-piracy things they make the ignorant feel empowered, make the smart feel like they're being condescended to, and make the pirates bored with how easy it was to crack it.
Re: More on iTMS
Date: 2004-01-27 06:31 pm (UTC)the right to listen to music should not be restricted to the machines that some company decided it should be. i bought it, i should be able to use it anywhere i want.
the DMCA says otherwise, and the DRM companies as far as i'm concerned are just catering to it in order to make money by making the RIAA labels happy.
Rights I would have had for analog recordings for decades are being destroyed simply by putting the word digital in front of it. I won't condone that.