Apple's New Music Service

[theknife]

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/apple29_20030429.htm

let's see...Mac only (there's goes 97% of your market)...looks a tad more reasonable (no subscription , unlimited copying) than the other feeble commercial attempts, but .99 cents per song?
still a rip, imo...

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by theknife
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/apple29_20030429.htm

let's see...Mac only (there's goes 97% of your market)...looks a tad more reasonable (no subscription , unlimited copying) than the other feeble commercial attempts, but .99 cents per song?
still a rip, imo...

Yeah, I agree. Less usage restrictions is good but it is still badly overpriced... no wonder even Hilary likes it:

By Monday, Apple had struck "landmark" licensing deals with the five biggest music companies, and it garnered the blessing of no less a critic of the tech industry than Hilary Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America. "The Apple system has the potential to do for music sales what the Walkman did for the cassette," Rosen told the New York Times on Monday.

- tg

[Ðiego]

By Monday, Apple had struck "landmark" licensing deals with the five biggest music companies, and it garnered the blessing of no less a critic of the tech industry than Hilary Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America. "The Apple system has the potential to do for mac users what my finger did for me when it broke through the toiletpaper," Rosen told the New York Times on Monday.

[TankGirl]

The service seems to have got a succesful start:

Observers are calling the launch of Apple Computer's digital music service the iTunes Music Store an overwhelming success, Billboard Bulletin reports. The service, which went live Monday, sold an estimated 275,000 tracks at 99 cents apiece in its first 18 hours, according to major-label sources.

Not a bad result for selling online music to Apple owners only.

- tg

[theknife]

does seem to be all the rage, doesn't it?

[Ðiego]

Apple Web Music Venture Ignites Industry

Allen Evans of Middlesex, Vt., is no stranger to digital music. About two-thirds of his music collection comes from free copies on file-swapping networks. The remainder was ripped from CDs he and his family already owned.

Recently, Evans downloaded four songs - and gladly paid for them.

The 19-year-old's purchases, along with 1 million other tracks sold in the first week of business for Apple Computer Inc.'s online music store, mark a refreshing turn of events for the ailing music industry.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive and the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a rock star, has succeeded in a major coup, forcing tectonic change in an industry notorious for its dinosaur pace and dragon tactics.

At 99 cents a download with virtually no restrictions on how and where the songs can be played, Apple's service for Macintosh users is proving to be the most promising alternative yet to free, pirated music.

"The hardest part was to convince the labels that 99-cents-a-download is a legitimate business, and Apple did that work already," said Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst at Forrester Research.

"If it weren't for Steve Jobs' persistence, I don't think this would have happened," said Hilary Rosen, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America and its most vocal piracy fighter.

Over 18 months, Jobs and a small team of high-level Apple employees negotiated the deals with Universal, Warner, BMG, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment. At times, Jobs personally demonstrated the music service to persuade the Eagles, Dr. Dre, Sheryl Crow and other reluctant artists to come aboard.

Jobs hit the right chord with artists and with some of the very record executives who had, two years ago, accused him of encouraging piracy.

Rosen said Jobs sold them on the elegance and simplicity of the iTunes Music Store design. He persuaded them, she said, to bet on his strong belief that consumers want to "own" the music they download - instead of see songs disappear from their computers under existing subscription-based services.

Because Apple commands less than 3 percent of the desktop computer market, the iTunes Music Store amounts to a trial run, Rosen said.

More importantly, Jobs struck at the right time.

After two years of declining CD sales, unabated online piracy and lukewarm consumer interest for its own online subscription services, the industry was ready for something new.

Jobs, who also runs the Pixar Animation Studios behind such hits as the "Toy Story" movies, "had the integrity and talent, with the experience of movie and songs and technology," said Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, part of Universal Music Group.

Jobs' success is encouraging to competitors and wannabes, especially those that serve the Windows market, which Apple says the iTunes Music Store won't serve until later this year.

"If he's the one that gets the game going - great," said Dan Hart, chief executive of Echo, a joint venture of Tower Records, Best Buy and four other retail chains that plans to mirror Apple's pay-per-song model in the larger Windows world.

Echo has yet to complete technology and licensing deals, he said, but the time is ripe.

That Apple's store sold a million tracks in the week following its April 28 launch apparently shocked record executives, who said they would have been satisfied with a million in a month.

"Apple's success has shown that by loosening the restrictions on what consumers can do with the music, that's the right way to compete with free" file sharing, Hart said.

Competitors point out that Apple isn't the first to sell downloads by the song. And other services, too, allow burning onto CDs and transfers to portable music players.

But Apple was the first to piece everything together - with virtually no restrictions, a reasonable price and a relatively easy-to-use computer jukebox program - all without charging subscriptions, industry analysts say.

Customers can keep the songs indefinitely, play them on any number of iPod portable players and burn unlimited copies onto CDs.

By contrast, industry-backed music services such as pressplay and MusicNet require monthly fees and disable songs once subscriptions end.

Singer-songwriter Janis Ian, a Grammy Hall of Fame inductee and vocal critic of her industry's anti-piracy tactics, is thrilled by the new Apple offering.

"You can't call it visionary because they should have come up with this five years ago," she said. "It's ironic that a computer manufacturer is teaching the record industry the next step, and so far, that's what's happening."

Listen.com, which is being acquired by RealNetworks, plans to keep charging subscriptions to Rhapsody, its online music service, while adding a pay-per-song option, said company spokesman Matt Graves.

Echo plans to let consumers choose between a subscription package and single-song downloads.

Microsoft Corp., too, is entering the online music fray next week with MSN Radio Plus. Though it will initially charge $4.99 a month for streaming - listening to music while connected online - MSN may one day match Apple's per-song downloading onto computers, said Hadi Partovi, general manager of MSN Entertainment.

"Microsoft is glad to see the labels are providing more flexibility. They're providing that to anybody, not just to Apple," Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in an interview. "We think we can help the labels and shift behavior toward the legitimate purchase now that the flexibility has gone up."

Dan Sheeran, vice president of marketing at RealNetworks, sent Apple a thank-you e-mail. By promoting the idea of legal downloads, he said in an interview, Apple "is really good at getting a lot of attention - and other people tend to get the economic benefit."

Ð

[TheOnlyBob]

I few frinds of mine at work have MAC's and they said it was really cool. Not my first choise but each to there own.

[JackSpratts]

The sound, um, sux.

Apple downloads ring sour note
Sound quality doesn’t match up to excellent user experience
Gary Krakow

All hail Apple’s iTunes Music Store. It’s very well thought out, and beautifully executed. If only as much thought had gone into the sound quality, which is far from beautiful.

THE INTERNET is nearly the perfect medium for downloading music, video and more, as anyone who has ever played with Napster or other file-sharing services knows. But with the music industry up in arms about stolen royalties, something had to be done to give them and the musicians their share of the pie, and companies have been struggling to find ways to do it. You have to give Apple a lot of credit for figuring out a really neat way to tap into this huge market for downloads — and for getting lots of publicity for its launch.

Overall, Apple’s music store is a pleasure to use. It’s easy, fast and efficient. It’s so easy — and mindless — I can see users (assuming they have both a Mac and OS X) spending lots of money downloading music.

My biggest problem, however, is with the quality of the downloads.

Apple has chosen AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) compression for the music. (AAC is actually Dolby’s version of the MPEG- 4 audio codec.) Apple says AAC is more efficient than older formats like MP3 and that “expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 kbps (stereo) to be virtually indistinguishable from the uncompressed audio source.”

I’d love to meet those experts.

Last night, I downloaded the latest album by The Wallflowers to hear what Apple’s downloads sound like compared to the “real” CD, which I own. After my one-click download, I burned a CD of the cuts. The CD played on the Apple computer, on my PC and in my two standalone DVD players. (Any device that can play a DVD can play burned copies of Apple’s AAC-compressed songs.)

The burned disk did NOT play in any of my CD players. Not in the ones hooked up to my stereo, my portable players, or even in an old laptop without DVD capabilities. Nor did they play on either of my older MP3 players.

It’s true: Apple’s AAC cuts sound great with the tiny little speakers that come with computers. And they sound pretty good on an original (but AAC upgraded) iPod through the stock headphones. But listen through good headphones and what you’ll hear is dull-sounding bass, slightly sibilant voice quality and a lack of three- dimensionality.

When I moved up to the DVD player connected to my stereo, the difference was huge. The AAC cuts had a complete lack of air around the singer and instruments in the band. The sound quality was somewhat dynamic, but dull sounding. When I compared the downloaded songs to the real CD it was no contest. The uncompressed CD .AIFF files sounded much, much, much better.

This might not matter to most people, but consider this: The Wallflowers CD cost me $11.99 when I bought it. I can make as many legal copies as I like for my personal use — and those copies all sound great and play on any device I can think of. I can also rip the songs onto my MP3 players and the iPod. The Wallflowers download from iTunes cost me $9.99, is limited in where I can play and store it — and the sound is inferior.

Even if you think AAC cuts are good enough for your listening needs, you’re paying way too much for this near-CD quality when a few cents more per cut can get you the real thing. Apple should consider slashing the price of their music to reflect the ultimate quality of its offerings. For now, I’ll stick with CDs.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/909907.asp?cp1=1

[Mazer]

After the way the music industry has guilt-tripped people into paying for downloads, the sound quality doesn't even matter. I think eventually they'll try raising the price and people will still pay it. I'm willing to bet that the price of each song isn't related to production, recording, and distribution of the song because compressing and hosting each track is pretty damn cheap these days. I'd guess that $.75 of the $.99 goes to licencing the AAC codec from Dolby. I can't say that I totally approve of the product or the pricing, but it's nice to see this kind of business model finally put to good use.

So here's my list of good advice that Apple's going to ignore:

• Use EAC or some other kind of secure ripping software to eliminate gaps and noise
• Use an open standard for compression like LAME or Ogg Vorbis to improve sound quality, increase compatibility, and reduce cost all at the same time
• Charge less than $.25 for each track
• Port the service to Windows with absolutely NO changes to the software

Apple's off to a good start but that doesn't mean they can't screw it up. Call me a cynic, but we've seen promising businises like this one go down the toilet before.

But I will optimistically label this venture as the next evolutionary step in the internet media business, and when video on demand becomes 'legitimate' it won't be as bad as everybody thought; maybe there is no future for DRM after all.

[Ðiego]

I'd guess that $.75 of the $.99 goes to licencing the AAC codec from Dolby

No, I'd say 75/80c is going to the RIAA..

maybe there is no future for DRM after all

Don't bet yer nadz on it..

They will lock it all down..


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[Ðiego]

Apple iTunes update irritates fans

Apple is clamping down on piracy by imposing restrictions on the way that music downloaded from its iTunes service can be shared.

Changes to the service stop people listening across the internet to playlists of songs created by others.

The change was included in an iTunes software update that also fixed some bugs in the service.

ITunes users are divided over the changes, but some people have been heavily critical.

Apple's iTunes music store has become hugely popular since it was launched in May of this year and recorded about a million downloads in its first week.

Part of the reason for its popularity was the fact that it placed few restrictions on what people could do with the music they downloaded.

The iTunes service allowed people to listen to almost any music collection that was sharing the same local computer network as they were.

But clever iTunes users found a way to extend this local sharing across the internet using Apple's own Rendezvous software.

Details of how to tweak iTunes to make it share playlists over the internet, and allow people to record the songs being streamed, were published online.

The update for iTunes is intended to close this loophole and limit who can listen to a playlist.

"Rendezvous music sharing..., has been used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us," said Apple in a statement.

"Some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the internet to people they do not even know," it added. "This was never the intent."

The change has been widely debated on discussion boards online as well as on sites such as Mac Central and Slashdot.

Many people have said the restrictions mean they will not upgrade to the latest version and that the change stops many legitimate uses of iTunes.

One angry user wrote on Slashdot: "The digital lifestyle is all about the fluidity of bits, the fact that all computers on the internet are, in some sense, in the same place, no matter where they're physically located."

Others were less outraged and said that, even with the change, the iTunes service imposed far fewer conditions on its users than many other online music services.

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[theknife]

Others were less outraged and said that, even with the change, the iTunes service imposed far fewer conditions on its users than many other online music services.

my online music service imposes no conditions whatsoever

[Smoketoomuch]

Liars.

Apple's website boasted that their format was actually better than CD quality, which reminded me of their earlier claims that the 500mhz G4 tiBook was a “supercomputer.” How can a lossy format be better when the files are ripped from a CD? The main goal of a lossy format is to sound as similar to the uncompressed file as possible, in the smallest footprint possible.

Clearly ogg is the best by a long shot - you must look very hard to see a difference that would suggest aac is better than even mp3.

http://www.phataudio.org/modules.php...er =1&thold=0

edit> toP: wav, others: ogg, aac, mp3, all 128kbit. Guy forgot to name it properly. It would have been better if he would have forgotten something else, for instance displaying the entire photoshop + desktop.