Behind the Scenes In Apple Vs. the Record Labels 146
je ne sais quoi writes "The New York Times recently posted an article describing what really happened between Apple and the Record labels that culminated with the January 6th Macworld Keynote by Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller." Essentially they discuss a bit of a swap: Apple allowed variable pricing for songs and the industry allowed DRM free music. And apparently the iTunes homepage is a huge hit making device. Big shock.
misleading wording (Score:5, Informative)
No, they gave up DRM, and copy protection is sort of related to that. They did not give up anything even remotely related to copyright protection, unless I somehow missed the part where Apple talked RIAA into releasing works into the public domain.
That's just plain wrong. Bad reporter!
Re:iMusic industry news (Score:3, Informative)
Apple can't open it's own record label. From Wikipedia: "In 1978, Apple Corps, the Beatles-founded holding company and owner of their record label, Apple Records, filed a lawsuit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with an undisclosed amount being paid to Apple Corps. This amount had been estimated to be US$50â"US$200 million, but was later revealed to be US$80,000.[1] As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer [wikipedia.org]
They got into hot water with Apple Records when iTunes got big. An actual recording label would blatantly go against the agreement.
Re:Sorry, I don't speak Vague (Score:3, Informative)
...
The one interesting idea brought to the table was the idea of a "subscription fee" for music... pay a monthly fee and listen to _whatever_ you want. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I kinda like it as a compromise between DRM and piracy, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem like that would _stop_ piracy at all.
The subscription thing has been done. There are one or two mainstream services that offer that. Some people love it, others hate it.
Personally I'm not a fan, while listening to anything I want on-demand is cool I hate subscriptions, particularly for something like this.
I'm not that into music. On average I buy maybe 1-2 songs a month from iTunes, more if I get a gift card or want a whole album. That's $24-$36 USD per year with the latest variable prices, and I get to keep my music.
If I was REALLY into music and listed to a LOT of stuff then I could see the benefit. But for me, i'm fine with the occasional song purchase.
Re:Sorry, I don't speak Vague (Score:5, Informative)
Appleinsider also covered the same subject, so I'll you decide if it is any better:
Heated Christmas call from Jobs secured iTunes changes [appleinsider.com]
Re:iMusic industry news (Score:5, Informative)
Apple can't open it's own record label. From Wikipedia: "In 1978, Apple Corps, the Beatles-founded holding company and owner of their record label, Apple Records, filed a lawsuit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit was settled in 1981 with an undisclosed amount being paid to Apple Corps. This amount had been estimated to be US$50â"US$200 million, but was later revealed to be US$80,000.[1] As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer [wikipedia.org] They got into hot water with Apple Records when iTunes got big. An actual recording label would blatantly go against the agreement.
This agreement is no longer in effect. Apple Corp has signed over all Trademark for Apple to Apple Computer, Inc (now Apple Inc) in 2007. In return, Apple Corp has a perpetual license to use the Apple name for their label. However Apple Inc. can now do whatever they want with regards to the music business.
Palm doesn't have to overcome it at all (Score:3, Informative)
This is part of what an iphone "killer" has to overcome (I'm looking at you Palm).
But with iTunes songs being DRM free now, Palm doesn't have to build their own iTunes - they just have to be able to feed songs into their own device from the users iTunes library, and support AAC (an open audio format).
They could even list all songs and ones that are still locked down could take you to the Apple iTunes Plus page to unlock (which you can happily do on a song by song basis now).
Re:iMusic industry news (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dependency and Apple (Score:1, Informative)
Or a similarly-featured open source program that is dedicated to interfacing to many different music sales sites could show up on the scene...
www.getsongbird.com
Re:iMusic industry news (Score:4, Informative)
They already sell the software to make the tracks: http://www.apple.com/logicexpress/#recording [apple.com]
And it looks there is some sort of approval process at Apple to get your songs online, and lots of various companies that will help with this step, for a fee of course. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/564768.html [google.com]
The only missing part is the free-for-all publishing system of YouTube, which is probably a good thing.
Re:Palm doesn't have to overcome it at all (Score:3, Informative)
Apple Margins (Score:3, Informative)
Now you have Apple negotiating on your behalf for lower prices ... If Apple's dominance in music distribution is ever broken, expect prices to double or triple as you'll have no one with any power negotiating on your behalf anymore.
As I read the article, it seems it was the labels that wanted "variable" pricing, and Apple that wanted to stick with $1/track.
I don;t think you are right about lower prices. All the other a la carte services have generally undercut Apple's pricing, usually $0.8 or so per track, except for the high quality lossless tracks that were often charged at over the $1 mark.
Furthermore, given Apple's historical aversion to low prices (its margins have generally been at least a generally reliable ~3x the industry average), I'd think that its premium prices for hardware would be reflected in its software licensing prices as well.
Re:No Pity/Sucks to be them. (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I buy CDs.. But the easy UI isn't also an 'impediment'?
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding [wikipedia.org]
in the "Other Portable Players" section:
Creative Zen Portable
Microsoft Zune
SanDisk Sansa
Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with firmware 2.0 or greater
Sony Walkman
SonyEricsson Walkman Phones-W series, e.g. W890i
Nintendo DSi To be released in America mid-2009
Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player
and 3 non-Apple phones, and a whole bunch of "Other" devices. Woah, that's very few, all right.
Just being in separate industries doesn't cut it (Score:2, Informative)
The issue of whether something is or isn't infringement depends on whether it would be confusing, and cause consumers to assume that one product is produced by another company -- essentially free-riding on the other's reputation.
My understanding is that the Apple Records vs. Apple Computer suit never got to the point of determining whether that was the case. If the suit had gone forward, a judge would have needed to rule on it one way or the other. But before that happened they arrived at some sort of deal, in which Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business and Apple Records out of computers. That deal persisted until 1997, when Apple Computer basically bought Apple Records out and acquired sole ownership of the "Apple" marque.