Steve Jobs and the State of Legal Music Downloads 964
An anonymous reader writes "Rolling Stone has published an interview with Steve Jobs about the current state of the music industry. He is a smart man, that guy. 'When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."'"
The Copy (Score:5, Interesting)
The state of legal music downloads (Score:1, Interesting)
The EULAs for iTunes and Napster 2 are horrible, more draconion than Microsoft software (which you are already running if you can use iTunes or Napster 2). If I choose to pay for music (and it is a choice these days), stop restricting me, stop invading my privacy and harassing me. It would have been easier to use Kazaa, eDonkey or Piolet to begin with, and there wouldnt have been any restrictions.
Add to that I live in canada, so I can't purchase music with these services (yes I tried).
Legal music downloading... (Score:0, Interesting)
My experiance with d/l'ing music... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I found, while wanting to sample a song (before I buy the CD), was when you download a song and play it, they have the first ten seconds of the song play normally, then a high pitched sound screeches designed to destroy speakers. I doubt a 10 year old kid is behind that.
But the good news is that WinMX is not as spammed as Kazaa. Not as many people, but chances are you will not get the mp3's which are clearly designed to destroy speakers.
A CEO who really uses his industry's technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
electric (Score:2, Interesting)
Real Crap... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Advances (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course the big record companies aren't likely to go for this kind of deal, at least not until they realize newer, smaller companies are eating their lunch.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the underlings have undermined their authority.
Think all the way back, changes in the recording industry, all the way to Thomas Edison, have resulted because a few people with a lot of money made changes. Magnetic Reel to Vinyl, Vinyl to Cassette, Cassette to CD (With the bastard child DAT in there somewhere), these changes all came about as a result of music industry exectives decreeing it.
They hate downloading music because they didn't come up with it first. It's superior to their physical distribution mechanisms, but because they didn't think of it; first they tried to crush it, then they tried to crush it again, with insane DRM.
It takes (I can't believe I'm going to say this, but) normal people like Jobs to put them in their place.
I think it says alot about the music industry when Steve Jobs becomes the straight man.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:5, Interesting)
iTunes' pricing scheme is $1 for a track or $10 for an album. That is cheap. That's what CDs should be priced at. I praise the prices of iTunes because it offers a reasonable price.
Customers don't always have to be ripped off. But the companies don't have to be ripped off either. Your idea doesn't work and there have been many failed services to prove it. What needs to happen is a happy compromise between the record companies and the consumer. The consumers need to get music for a reasonable price, but the record labels and artists need to get a fair profit. I believe iTunes is as close to this happy medium as we'll get.
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, but we are taught to work a problem until we have the answer. And I should remind you that the dissertation is only the beginning. Most of us finish the dissertation and then begin work on completely different projects that will set the course for the rest of our careers and the smartest of us will not only be able to discuss problems in great depth within our field, but we will also be able to draw upon broad training in a number of other fields. For instance, my training is in neuroscience, medicine and physiology, but there is also significant background in computer science and image analysis that has allowed our lab to make significant headway in the field of molecular phenotyping using a combination of fields of study including neuroscience, physiology, molecular biology, genetics, computer science and chemistry along with image forensics and analysis.
There are a great many labs around with incredibly smart individuals in them that would scare the pants off of many of us with their intelligence, so don't sell someone short simply because you don't know what they know.
Apple Vs. RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just have Apple (or any online service) provide recording studio time and some advertising?
Jobs doesn't answer this because there is no answer. He hints at it, by saying that pretty soon the record companies won't be able to offer advances and survive (in which case, they are useless to the artist), but in general the best he can come up with for the record company's purpose is that "they pick winners." Hogwash.
1. He goes on to say that they lose money because they also pick losers, and
2. we all know as their audience that winners are not just picked, they are made. I mean, sure, record companies pick some winners -- because by definition, to be a winner you need a major label. They're serving as gatekeepers on the success of equally talented, but unsigned, artists, due to limits on advertising budgets and the disposable income of the music-buying public. What do they do for their artists? Record companies provide an advance, they provide tons of advertising and payola, and they skim off the top. That's it.
So the key to making iTunes, or any online service, popular with the Napster generation is simply this: guarantee us that the money isn't going to some crap record company, but instead to the artists we appreciate and love (and some to provide expenses and a reasonable profit, maybe 5%, to the new, more effective distribution system). Bottom line. Do that and we'll buy. Until then, screw it.
Conundrum (Score:5, Interesting)
I say, support the artists you like any way you can. If you like a bunch of songs on an album, buy it. See them live when they come to your town. But don't shed a tear when the labels cry about their profit margins shrinking from 20% to 15%. I also don't think they're going away anytime soon, precisely because of their massive margins (but I don't know what they really are because they've hidden their profits so well). However, I do think there is hope from a new generation of internet-based labels, like CD Baby [cdbaby.com], who are willing to treat artists fairly (gasp! what a concept!). I'm eager to see how this plays out. I hope Jobs will allow smaller labels (like the one I'd like to start in my bedroom) onto iTunes. This will piss of the majors, but...who gives a fuck about them? They've been screwing over artists and consumers for years. Viva la revolution!
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Bargain bin; Record Rental Amendment (Score:5, Interesting)
Observation: Ever looked in the $5.88 DVD bargain bin at Wal-Mart?
Observation: A DVD of a movie typically sells for about the same price as a CD of the movie's soundtrack.
Explanation: DVD Video titles in general are so cheap because the movies fixed therein have already had a theatrical run. CDs don't have anything analogous.
Explanation 2: CDs are rather expensive because the retail price does not have to compete with rentals thanks to the Record Rental Amendment of 1984, which states that no person shall rent, lease, or lend a phonorecord[1] of a copyrighted sound recording without the consent of both the owner of copyright in the sound recording and the owner of copyright in the underlying musical work. In practice, such copyright owners never grant consent for a shop to rent CDs on the scale that a local DVD rental store rents DVDs.
Music contracts (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopefully not. I've never signed a contract that would allow the record label to withhold my earnings until they had made a profit on *all* of their artists. There is usually a clause in the contract that allows them to withhold a 15-20% reserve, which they always do. This reserve is meant to be held against *your* sales gross, not the sales of the entire record company. Most smaller labels track all their numbers on a per artist/per release basis. Bigger labels are dealing with much lower profit margins and lots more money up front, so they probably have a completely different way of doing the books. Artists and their managers need to take a better look at their label's contracts. I would not sign anything that would keep me from earning money because the label was doing badly with other artists. If they did withold it, I would expect to get it back once the label was able to pay it.
iTunes in Canada (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
And this affects what system the music gets played on in what way?
Let's read the next sentence together, shall we?
" And one of the reasons Apple was able to do what we have done was because we are perceived by the music industry as the most creative technology company."
Hmm, interesting, the next sentence nullifies your entire post. Well, next time, read to the end of the paragraph.
Steve Jobs, Capitalist Dog (Score:2, Interesting)
From the article:
I was listening to the Mike Reagan show around Thanksgiving time, and apparently the Pilgrims went through the same phase. Their original charter stated that each family would be given a plot of land to farm, from which all crops would be put in a community store. Everyone would get a equal share of crop.
The plan failed misserably. There was no incentive to work hard. Its the same reason the Communism lost the cold war. There's no point in working harder if the fruits of your labor are taken away by the state.
So, the Pilgrims threw away the old charter and wrote a new one. Rather than having to surrender all to the community store, families kept their crops. Those that worked hard during the growing season got to eat during the winter. Those that didn't, died. Incentive spurned the surplus we know as Thanksgiving.
As Steve Jobs has forseen, the record companies can do the same thing. I suppose the losers are the musicians who don't make it. But why should we feel bad for the leetches of society?
Re:The protection doesn't work (Score:2, Interesting)
Dodging some questions (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems like in several cases he's dodging the question...or perhaps just doesn't understand it. for instance:
There's always been a legal alternative to stealing music; buying it. This applies whether it's a tape, cdr, or mp3. What IS the difference to the single person? How does this answear the question in any form at all?
-Chris
Revenue model vs. advance model (Score:3, Interesting)
The winners pay. The winners pay for the losers, and the winners are not seeing rewards commensurate with their success. And they get upset. So what's the remedy? The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, "We'll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we're not gonna give you an advance. The accounting will be simple: We're gonna pay you not on profits -- we're gonna pay you off revenues. It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime. We'll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you. But if you're not successful, you'll make no money. If you are, you'll make a lot more money." That's the way out. That's the way the rest of the world works.
So you see the recording industry moving in that direction?
No. I said I think that's the remedy. Whether the patient will swallow the medicine is another question.
How feasible is this? Are production costs reasonable enough that creating a record without an advance is possible?
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Jobs stays pretty current from what I gather... (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as Kazaa, I'm almost certain he's used it. Jobs is known to have a few PCs sitting around, some for Windows and some for NeXTSTEP/OpenStep.
It's also been said that Safari (Apple's Konq-based web browser for OS X) was originally a direct demand from Jobs when OmniWeb could no longer render the websites he was visiting.
There was an interview a couple years ago in which he talked about shopping around for some sort of crazy new hightech washing machine (a year or so before the Maytag Neptune came out).
Jobs may be an asshole, and he may not be a hardcore analog electrical engineer, but he seems to be quite the techie... a techie with style. NeXT and the Apple of 2003 display this quite well.
Now if only they would make a brushed aluminum version of the 17" widescreen lcd iMac...
Re:Bonus content (Score:1, Interesting)
St. Anger, you received a DVD which had the band practicing the entire album (pretty funny and intense at times) and a key to their "Vault" which had mp3s ripped from concert recordings (only 3 concerts so far but considering that's 2 hours a set, with each set having different sings usually
Re:Promotion; skill (Score:5, Interesting)
As a fan of the whole "punk rock" genre (and more obscure electronic stuff), I'm very well aware of the so-called "lock" that the big conglomerates have on traditional airwaves. But you know what else? I haven't turned on the radio in several years. Same goes for TV, which also suffers from the same, stifling corporate control. Basically, I've done what countless others have done: Formed networks of people who spread by word of mouth and compilation CD's and tapes and zines and so forth and that's how *we* get distribution and exposure. So what if the college frat kids down the street don't know or care who we are, we're not catering to them. If you're going to "whine" about the lock on the media rather than do something about it (in my case: by helping form and maintain and support alternative methods of distribution and promotion), then you're just like all those other whiners who constantly bitch about shit but never actually do anything about it "because they can't." No one's stopping you but you.
I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to commercial FM radio. Seriously. And it's precisely *because* of their lack of attention to music. But that doesn't stop me from listening to music.
Why are you still bitching about this? There's more to music than RADIO and music videos. Get out and see bands live, get involved in your local music community, start a band. Do Something.
Yes. There's an entire cottage industry of underground music, from electronica (trance, dance, trip hop), hip hop, rock and roll, indie rock, emo, punk, even "adult contemporary" and christian music being done every day by non-major labels.
Why are you making it so complicated? People write good/great music all the time and record on 4-tracks in the basements (see Ween and Pavement). But even then, I know a lot of studios (found in just about every city.. if you're town is starved for free FM radio space, I'm sure you have them, too) with good engineers and producers who are more than willing to work with you to get the "sound" you want. It'll just cost money. And why do you need "formal training" in songwriting? Some of the world's greatest songs and composers didn't have "formal training" in songwriting.
Imagine if Linus had sat around saying "Gee whiz. I can't use anything but Microsoft and Andrew won't let me play with his Minix.. I guess I'll go home and cry and listen to Bjork all day". Microsoft has a very similar grip on the computing industry that you're talking about, and yet there's Linux. And BSD. And countless others (in varying states of completion), countless examples that people aren't letting "microsoft" and their grip on the industry prevent them from doing something they want to do.
Re:The state of legal music downloads (Score:4, Interesting)
Firstly, the EULAs, I will concentrate on Napster 2.
- They may update their EULA at any time, and will not inform you of these changes, the EULA posted on their website (the only place you can see the current version) is not dated nor marked with a revision number. So the entire document must be scanned for changes, unless you complain and uninstall within 30 days of a change, you have indicated your acceptance.
-They reserve the right to push updates to your machine, both for their software, and for any software that communicates with it (namely WMP, but could include Windows itself, and Roxio CD burner). I don't particularily want someone else patching my software thank you very much.
-They reserve the right to disable any related software if the security is tripped, this includes Napster, WMP, and possibly windows itself...
To me, thats all scary stuff individually, when you add it up, I don't think there isnt any rights I havent given them with regards to my machine, and if I havent givent them those rights yet, they can just update the EULA to give them to themselves.
I tried Napster 2 and iTunes hoping to be able to purchase music convienently online. I no longer watch stolen movies, use stolen software, or listen to stolen music. So I needed an easy way to get single songs, or albums I liked, easily. Unfortuantly, not living in the US prevents me from doing this.
And no, it isn't legal for me to copy my neighbour's CDs, even in Canada.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bargain bin; Record Rental Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm gonna stop you right there. CDS ARE NO EXPENSIVE. CDS ARE CHEAP. VERY CHEAP. Someone else higher up in this thread said that "CDs have been the same price forever," and he/she is right. 15 years ago, CDs were 15 bucks. Today, CDs are 15 bucks. However, consider inflation. CDs have actually dropped in price, by that measure.
Consider what you get for your $15. An hour of digitally-mastered music, which you can listen to in any order, whenever you want, for as long as you want, forever. And when you finally get bored of it, you can sell it and recoup some of your money. We're talking THOUSANDS of hours of entertainment for your $15. What other form of entertainment even comes close to offering this much bang-for-the-buck?
CDs don't look so bad now, do they. You mean I can listen to it over and over, forever, and sell it when I'm done, and all for only $15? WAKE UP. CDS ARE CHEAP.
Subscription models (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the real stumbling block for subscription models lies in their selection and the usability of the downloads. If one could pay $x (10, 15, 20?) per month to the itunes music store and have the ability to download any song from the store and use it in the way one can use itms downloads now (with the exception that downloads only function as long as you're subscribed), I think the service would be very popular.
Of course popular != profitable or possible. Most people would download a lot more than they do from pay per download services - increasing the costs to the provider. Maybe some would download so much that the system would be unworkable. There are many reasons a subscription service that is otherwise similar to the itms might fail.
My point is only that the reason susbcription models don't work is not because people insist on overly fetishistic notions of ownership with respect to music. It's (probably) because the right mix of rights cannot be rented at a subscription price that people can pay.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:2, Interesting)
No, if this happened they'd just move all the computer work to a country that didn't have these DRM laws, like India or China.
oh, wait...
Re:Subscription models (Score:3, Interesting)
That alone would be enough to make the service fail. Not the timing factor, but the verification factor. How would you implement that? Would the download itself expire, and I have to re-download it periodically? Or would it have to "check" every time I use it? Would that require a network connection? How would that work on a laptop or iPod? Could I burn it to disk?
Subscriptions failed because the subscription places offered nothing compelling to pay a regular monthly fee for. Netflix (a subscription based rental service) works because you can get just about anything you want. If they had a poor selection, no one would use it. Why do you think some channels are provided in basic cable? Because no one would pay for that channel by itself. Heck, even HBO has to have a "package" as it is not worth paying for it in itself... (Especially after the Sopranos go away).
inarguably ungratifying (Score:3, Interesting)
Jobs' comment that "a legal alternative to stealing music hadn't been invented until six months ago" takes "arguable" to new heights.
Despite the nose bleed, this article taught me something: the secret of Jobs' marketing genius is to equate instant gratification to a constitutional entitlement.
First he names the company after something you stick in your mouth, and twenty years later he is still trying to compel people to lick the visuals. It's a view of the American constitution through an infant psyche.
Jobs Advocates Jail Time For Music Swappers (Score:3, Interesting)
This from a guy who got started stealing long distance service and reselling it on the Berkeley campus.
You've come a long way, baby. [rollingstone.com]
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:3, Interesting)
We all know that it's theft. You simply don't like the word because you can't hide from what it says about what you are doing, so you sanitize it away until you are comfortable.
You suffer from underprecision. Copyright infringement is not theft. This is pure and simple fact. Theft, as someone pointed out earlier, requires that the thief take something, thereby depriving the rightful owner of that thing.
You apparently think that using the English language properly and precisely is a fallacy. I feel the opposite. I would argue that the problem is that you simply don't have the proper emotional response to copyright infringement, so you feel it is necessary to use a word with a different meaning, thief, in order to convey the moral and ethical meaning you want.
The point is, saying that a thief is the same as a copyright infringer is inaccurate. However, you insist that the term "thief" be used because to you this connotes the proper moral and ethical issues, whereas "copyright infringer" apparently does not. To me it does - a "copyright infringer" gains access to something he should not have access to, and thereby harms the copyright holder; this is not the same as stealing, or being a thief. But it still is morally and ethically wrong.
Do you see the point? This is most certainly not a "fallacy of precision", if such a thing even exists. It is simply using language to indicate precisely what is meant; if you misunderstand, if you think that being a "copyright infringer" is not a bad thing, then that is a problem with your understanding, not what is said. Work on attaching the proper emotional baggage to the proper terms; don't use inaccurate words with different meaning just because you think the correct term carries insufficient emotional weight for your purposes. If you want to say "a copyright infringer is just as bad as a thief" then fine; just don't try and say the terms mean the same thing. They don't.
As for myself, I don't think a copyright infringer is as bad as a thief. A thief takes something so the rightful owner no longer has it or any control over it. A copyright infringer also takes something that does not belong to them, and in so doing they deprive the proper owner of certain amount of control over it. However, the original owner still retains use of it, and in fact possession of it. There is no doubt that they suffer harm, but not as much as inflicted by a thief. Infringing behaviour is still bad, but it is not the same as theft.
Re:Buying Music is Good Karma (Score:2, Interesting)
At ampfea.org [ampfea.org] we've banded together
There are quite a few patrons in our mix, let me tell you.
Philanthropists, too.
And a lot of good free music, incidentally
Re:Bonus content (Score:2, Interesting)