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."'"
Those are shorts? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Those are shorts? (Score:3, Funny)
the key is... (Score:5, Funny)
Incidently, you can convert any pair of shorts into slacks by wearing suitably long socks.
Re:Those are shorts? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, he is wearing G5 Shorts, arguably the longest shorts on the planet.
The way to protect digital content (Score:4, Insightful)
Bonus content (Score:5, Insightful)
I've gt a buddy with a HUGE classic vinyl collection (lots of rare stuff) and the artwork is worth WAY more than the record itself. Maybe there's a parallel these guys can draw to offer something a little more tangible than the bits. Having a scan of artwork isn't the same as having a rip of the music.
Of course for that to work, they'd have to stop pumping out 500 godzillion copies of every single album made, which is a problem for them as well.
Re:Bonus content (Score:5, Informative)
of course you cant to most of that with cd's... but the labels at least have to try.
Re:Bonus content (Score:5, Insightful)
They should. It would be well worth it for them to come out with a huge book sized packaging with one CD and lots of pages (pictures/text/lyrics), posters and what ever merchandising you can get in there.
You effectively can charge more, get free advertisement and make it worthwhile for people to go out and buy the product.
Re:Bonus content (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't just coloured! The classic Bauhaus album "Burning From The Inside" [0ne-shop.com] had this incredible picture from its cover somehow "imprinted" (I have no idea how it was achieved from the techical point of view) on the whole surface of the 12" disc. It was an unforgettable experience, just just watching it rotating on the turntable while listening to "She's in parties".
Re:Bonus content (Score:5, Informative)
i also have these really old acetate 78 10" records that had animations on the label that you could watch with a little mirror zoetrope that sat on top of the spinning record.
also there are weird ways of having two distinct grooves on a record so that depending on where you put the needle down a different song plays. tool did this as well as numerous underground resistance recordings.
clear vinyl is nifty too.
Re:Bonus content (Score:5, Informative)
I've noticed that a few new CDs are being advertised on television bundled with a DVD. Yeah, you might be able to download the DVD content online, too, but this is perhaps a sign of the music industry trying to do more to entice CD purchases (although there are still those who clamor for them to increase the quality of the actual music first).
I import quite a bit of Japan (yes, I watch too much anime), but the Japanese pack their initial releases with tons of goodies that definitely entice people to buy the actual products. Silkscreens, postcards, DVDs, other kinds of knick-knacks. Looks like the US market might be following suit a bit?
And for the record, I think despite these rewards, the Japanese also have a problem with piracy, partially due to the fact that their distribution is loaded with so many middlemen that their prices are even more outrageous than in the US.
Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:5, Insightful)
This man Understands.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let me make this veeeerrrrrry simple for you:
It breaks down on word 4.
Now, count carefully, and you'll see that word is "takes".
"Duplicates" is not a synonym for "takes".
This is difficult, I know, but try hard to get your head around it since once you do the rest follows quite logically.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I've got it now...all of those folks who are copying music without paying for it actually have permission from the artists/music companies to have those unpaid for copies, thus excepting them from the need to pay for it like the rest of us.
Because you see, if I hold copyright on something, I get to say who can and cannot have a copy of my work, including whether you must have put money into my or someone else's pocket. And if you have a copy, and have not abided by my decision as copyright holder, you now have something that doesn't belong to you. At this point its semantics, but it still comes down to theft.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I am... but there's something much different about that and taking your car so you can't use it any more.
We can now duplicate and transport information trivially. The times they are a changing and we're all going to have to update our thinking one way or the other.
Cheers.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is someone that trespasses on your property a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your right to not have people come onto your property.
Is someone that slanders you a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your good reputation.
Is someone that rapes you a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your viture or perhaps even virginity.
Is someone who speeds on the highways a "thief"? If so why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? The are after all "stealing" your right to safe passage on the nations highways.
Is someone that doesn't agree to have unprotect farm sex with you a "thief"? If so why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your right to "the pursuit of happiness".
The problem with you "copyright violation" == "thievery" people is that you either willingly or unwillingly help the english language to become less precise in order to bolster a particular socioeconomic interest group. You're a tool and a fool. Call a spade a spade. Argue with the accepted legal terms rather than using smear tactics. I might agree that copyright violations should be illegal and punished, but I'll call a dishonest tactic when I see one.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:5, Informative)
Incorrect.
It is copyright violation.
And if I'm in one of the jurisdictions around the world which is not a signatory to the Berne Convention, it's not any kind of a violation at all.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example: My mother knows many traditional folk songs of her particular ethnicity that were handed down at least from her grandmother's generation. Recently (late 1970s) somebody collected these songs and published them in a book. The rights to the book "arrangements" are now being vigorously defended by the copyright "owner" to the point that the larger church and social groups now refuse to sing them at campfires.
Who's stealing from whom?
The reality of the situation is that you cannot simultaneously expect total ownership and widespread distribution. Artists have always struggled with this: At what point do you let go and allow your art to become part of the world? But a painter who sells a picture can't expect to come into your house and verify that you haven't sketched a copy of it.
The long and the short of it is, if we allow copyright interests to become absolute, we destroy the engine that runs our culture. All art is fundamentally a form of copying in one way or another, because no man is an island.
These are important eighteenth-century issues. By the nineteenth century they were for all purposes solved to everyone's satisfaction. It's really amazing how far we've regressed.
-Graham
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just it, they are so only because we have tried to shoehorn them into a legal system built for physical property. Copyright is not a natural right, it is one that is created by the government. No one can deny that physical property is very different from "intellectual property," (which is a horrible term). Laws that work for a physical object do not directly translate into something as etheral as an idea. Because of that, we've tried to come up with a system that treats ideas as different than physical property, that system being copyright, patent, and to some degree trademark.
There is a difference between theft of a physical property, and copyright infringement. I am being pedantic about that because it matters. It is an easy heuristic to simplify copyright infringement = theft, but doing so ignores the issues specific to the former. I think everyone would benefit from a better understanding of the system, and, with any luck, find a more equitable way of dealing with it.
It seems odd that stealing a CD is a minor crime, while one instance of copyright infringement can be a $150,000 fine. If you want to say copyright infringement = theft, then each CD you steal form the local wherehouse music should net you ~ $1.5 million (assuming 10 songs per cd) fine.
-Ted
language abused once again.... (Score:4, Insightful)
2) the fact that you don't like something or feel that it should be more disliked that it currently is does not justify intentional obfuscation. Copyright infringement is not theft, both in the eyes of the law (previous SC decisions and the Constitution) and morally. It is wrong and prosecutable, but nonequivalent. (considering the ransom the RIAA is attempting to extract for copyright infringement versus the potential civil and criminal penalties for the theft of physical CDs, the RIAA doesn't view theft and copyright infringement them as identical, either.)
I could call copyright infringement "mass murder" but that commits two sins at once. One, a word with a precise legal meaning is intentionally confused with another - thus if repeated, neither word means what it did before. Speakers can't be sure what either term means, and so both terms lose the ability to express ideas that is their purpose. Two, the moral implications of mass murder are diluted by conflating it with copyright infringement; legitimate uses of the term lose their moral force in speech where they should possess such force.
Eggs are not chickens, no matter what I call them. Theft and copyright infringement are legal terms with independent legal realities, like a chicken and an egg. Choosing to call one the other doesn't prove that they are the same, only that the speaker either doesn't know or doesn't care about the law. The fact that copyright infringement is wrong and that the potential consequences are bad and likely harmful does not change its legal status.
3) copyright entitles both the users (via rights codified in law or requiring specific denial in law) and the providers. If I purchase a DRM CD, the rights given to me by copyright law are infringed - the terms of the copyrights are violated. In both cases, the users and the artist are deprived of the license to use a work as they see fit, rights in both cases given by law. Respect for copyrights requires that the people whose use them for profit should start by respecting them themselves. Linguisitic legerdemain or name-calling will not change reality - when the industries dispect their customers and the law that protects them while emphasizing and demonizing violations of the law by others and aggrandizing its defense of their actions, people will return the dispect in kind.
Copyright infringement is neither good in and of itself nor a good way of achieving the respect of copyright owners for the rights of their users, but according a moral status (theft) to it which the people who use copyrights are unwilling to accord it themselves (by altering copyright limitations with DRM and other schemes to limit legally given rights to use) is intellectually dishonest and ultimately counterproductive to the rights you hope to preserve.
Re:The way to protect digital content (Score:5, Insightful)
People already want to. People want to see concerts so bad that they have no problem giving ticketmaster about 15 dollars for the priveledge of selling them a ticket with a face value of 40. For really popular concerts its not uncommon for people to pay hundreds of dollars for a single ticket. But you might say, concerts != albums. No, they don't, but it does say that there is money that people are willing to pay for music. I hate repeating myself, but I will.
Give us our money's worth you fuckers! For the price of a CD I _expect_ good album art, lyrics, the content in multiple digital formats. At least. And btw, those oldies that people are downloading and collecting in droves should be about 5 dollars. A music recording is just that, its not a press for money. There is no excuse for a Beatles album to cost 12 to 20 bucks. 1/2 of them are dead, and I don't feel like contributing to Michael Jackson's child molestation defense fund. I gave at the office. (For those that don't know MJ owns I think 1/2 of the beatles rights, he used to have 100%).
Music is a part of the human experience. It is something that defines us as a culture and has been ever since sticks were 1st beat on something and it made a sound. People want it, and will pay for it. People don't care or necessarily want musicians and execs in the music industry to make 7 and 8 figures a year.
The Copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Copy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Buying Music is Good Karma (Score:5, Insightful)
We all have a mental list of talented and creative people we wish success to -- singers or bands we think should be recognized, actors we'd like to see in a series or a leading role, authors whose books we eagerly recommend to others and sometimes buy extra copies just to give away. I've given people money to support hopeless film projects because I think they're talented, and bought books no one else will ever read because I want the writer to keep writing.
We used to have formal systems for patronage, which provided financial support and promotion to individuals with talent or potential. What modern systems have taken the place of patronage? Are they better or worse at promoting the people "we wish success to"?
How can technology be used to promote people 'worthy' of patronage? We have various forms of word of mouth (e.g. blogrolling, recommended reading lists, etc.) but that doesn't seem like much help when you see cream that isn't rising to the top.
There should be a word for this.
McMe
DRM (Score:4, Funny)
Yes ladies and gentlement, Steve Jobs does know how to get the answers to the questions that matter the most.
---
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
Re:DRM (Score:4, Funny)
Shouldn't we all be complaining about how Apple is sending all the jobs overseas to monkeys in Russia and India instead of keeping American monkeys employed?
The protection doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The protection doesn't work (Score:3, Informative)
Not to be insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to be Funny (Score:3, Funny)
But just for moderators to mod me up Funny like the parent post.
Not to be Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
If I had mod points, I'd mod this parent Funny.
Oh come on Pudge... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be realistic Pudge, Apple would not have been able to get anything off the ground for the Music Store if it had no sharing limits. As with almost everything these days, a compromise is reached that makes the best sense for both parties (or for one, depending on your viewpoint).
I know, I know...this is slashdot, where every editor shows their bias on each story. Perhaps I'm asking too much.
-Cyc
Re:Oh come on Pudge... (Score:3, Informative)
Bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
That really isn't that insightful. What he should have said was "people are still going to copy digital content, no matter what you do." Saying that it's not possible to protect digital content is just like saying "it's not possible to protect your home." You can put a lock on the door, but a burglar can break the window. You can put up an alarm, he can cut the power or something. You can create an armored bunker, but if the burglar's got a tank, it's not really going to matter.
Re:Bad analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not my house. (Score:5, Funny)
My house is a Klein bottle. I have to sleep in my car.
Right of First Sale still hasn't been addressed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very important issue here because it blurs the line between Right of First Sale and Fair Use. While it's unlikely that right of First Sale can be sidestepped, how is it going to be possible to convince people who eventually will want to swap their legally purchased products from getting a bit of their money back in a legitimate re-sale. This is a great re-sale market from the buyers perspective because you can be sure the quality is top notch even after many sales. You just have to trust that people won't keep a copy in an open format when they make the sale. I'd say the whole premise is weak.
And yes, I do know that there are people of the opinion that Right of First Sale cannot apply in digital distribution, but if you look at the arguments that have been presented, the weak link is usually the part where they try to define copy and mangle the technical facts of how digital media is played in various digitial devices. There is no blanket defintion of copy that can cover all cases unless you use a naive definition of terms like RAM. That may convince non-technical people, but under closer scrutiny I've never seen a solid definition that worked across serval commonly available digital music players.
Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:5, Informative)
Smart guys. If you can play it, you can copy it. Either someone breaks the copy protection (Jon J) or you plug a digital out into a digital in.
Trouble is the record companies know this but still keep trying which just makes it harder and more frustrating for the avarage guy/girl who wants to listen to ligit tracks on a mp3 player.
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:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please! Gimmie a break! You're so off the mark, it's not even funny. Record companies don't give a sh*t about such juvenile phallus-metrics like "who invented it first" - they're all about the bottom line. That's all Vivendi, Universal, et. al. care about. They couldn't care less who invented it. They only care whether or not it will increase their profits.
These mega-corporations didn't get as huge as they are by succumbing to such pitiful "Not-Invented-Here" ego-wars. They chase the money. That's all.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:5, Insightful)
This, of course, makes Linux illegal. Unless all access to hard drives and similar hardware is enclosed in a closed-source, black-box interface layer. The effective end of open source.
I'm hoping the electronics industry will never go for it, but considering the recent news about Phoenix ditching BIOS [slashdot.org] in favor of "Trusted Computing," that hope is rapidly fading.
We need to do something before the right to hack stuff is completely taken away.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:3, Funny)
Bug: Place your projectile weapon on the ground.
Edgar: You can have my gun ...[chsnick]... when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers.
Bug: Your proposal is acceptable.
Edgar: Aaaaaagggghhh! [dies]
- Men In Black
Make it cheap and easy (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally like the idea of being able to hear a song before I buy it and then just buy the songs I like. That why iTunes is good.
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:5, Insightful)
If CDs were like 1/2 price, like $8 or less, a lot more people would think about buying them
I doubt that very much ... I suspect that what would be happening at that price point is that people would be saying "If CDs were like 1/2 price, like $4 or less, a lot more people ...."
People expect something for nothing and have found a way to get just that, and they use the "expense" argument to justify their actions to themselves. The only reason you don't see the same thing happening with DVDs is that most people don't have the bandwidth and diskspace to download movies. Yet. Wait a few years, and then you are going to start hearing "If DVDs were like 1/2 price, like $15 or less, a lot more people ...."
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Bargain bin; Record Rental Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
CDS ARE CHEAP.
Hold on a second. When CDs came out they were twice as expensive as LPs. Labels said this was due to their limited manufacturing ability at the time (it was limited). Flash forward to when CD manufacturing costs plummetted. Where was the corresponding plummet in price? There was none, the labels enjoyed the fat profit of their inflated price. The labels made their bed with their own greed and now they get to lay in it.
What other form of entertainment even comes close to offering this much bang-for-the-buck?
Right now I can walk down the street and purchase "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", a three-hour movie, remastered and fully restored, for ten bucks. I can then walk over to the music aisle and get an old, not remastered CD of the soundtrack (about 30 minutes of music) for eleven bucks.
In conclusion:
Don't give in to Apple's lies. (Score:5, Funny)
But is this really such a shock? Lets look for a moment at Apple Computers. Founded by long haired hippies, this company has consistently supported 60's counter-cultural "values". But there are even darker undertones to this company than most are aware of. Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent. It is now Apple Computers offering us temptation, thereby aligning themselves with the forces of darkness.
This company is well known for its cult-like following. It isn't much of a stretch to say that it is a cult. Consider co-founder and leader Steve Jobs' constant exhortation through advertising (i.e. mind control) that its followers should "think different". We have to ask ourselves: "think different than whom or what?" The disturbing answer is that they want us to think different than our Christian upbringing, to reject all the values that we have been taught and to heed not the message of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Given the now obvious anti-Christian and cultish nature of Apple Computers, is it any wonder that they have decided to base their newest operating system on Darwinism? This just reaffirms the position that Darwinism is an inherently anti-Christian philosophy spread through propaganda and subliminal trickery, not a science as its brainwashed followers would have us believe.
plagiarized from ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't give in to Apple's lies. (Score:5, Informative)
Advances (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:My experiance with d/l'ing music... (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that the P2P networks are so full of garbage as to make hem not worth the effort. And it's always been like that. Anyone who's tried them out can tell you that.
With a legal source you dion't really have to worry about the sabotage files, the misnamed files and the crappy encodings. And you can preview anything before you decide to buy it. Every track on iTunes can be previewed.
jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Informative)
Actual current numbers for the sub services:
Rhapsody (from Real Networks): 250,000
MusicNet: 175,000
Napster (formerly pressplay): 80,000
MusicMatch MX: 150,000
Total here is over 600,000. These services tend to run about $10 per month, yielding a total revenue of over $6 million per month across all services. iTunes has sold 20 million songs in 7 months, or less than $3 million in revenue. Profit margins on subscriptions are higher as well.
I use Rhapsody and it kicks iTunes ass - there's just no comparison, given my listening habits (I'm almost always online). Looks like there are plenty of people who agree with me.
Real Crap... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Real Crap... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a little apples to oranges (hah hah) and you are strictly comparing song revenue, but repeat after me "Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a hardware company."
iTunes exists to sell iPods. What's the profit margin
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all? For me, paying $10 per month for access to basically all the music I care about is a fantastic, unbelievable deal. I can still buy CDs or even buy tracks on iTunes if I want - but that doesn't negate the value of the subscription service.
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Earnings report link [realnetworks.com]?
How many of those "subscribers" just signed up for a free trial period? (Elsewhere they make a point of mentioning "paying subscribers", so i think that's a valid question.)
How many subscribers cancelled or went inactive during the quarter?
There's lots of stuff that gets glossed-over or left out of official press releases. I don't use either service, nor do i own an Apple product, so i have nothing to gain from either one, but i distrust anything a company says about itself.
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Informative)
-
Rhapsody: 250,000 [yahoo.com]
-
MusicMatch: 150,000 [com.com] (scroll down - it's in the body of the article)
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MusicNet: 175,000 [216.239.57.104]
Can't find the Napster numbers, but I think the numbers above should convince you I know what I'm talking about.Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:3, Insightful)
While I don't necessarily believe that they can protect it, I think it's far more interesting that here's yet another group that thinks just because a Ph.D. said something it's gotta be true. Holy crap, when are they going to learn that a Ph.D. doesn't give people complete insight into all things. Hell, most of the time they don't have insight beyond the scope of their own disseration.
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.
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:4, Insightful)
How so? As dasmegabyte [slashdot.org] stated, a Ph.D. is a certification of sorts that demonstrates an ability to solve problems and communicate those problems to the community. Granted, lots of folks solve problems every day without that certification, and they might be very good at it, but if I were hiring a person to accomplish a particularly difficult job that required a certain degree of background knowledge, in many cases, someone with a Ph.D. would get the nod over someone who did not have that certification. All other things being equal of course.
It applies equally to anyone in any field. Hopefully we all understand that PhDs are not the only ones who are taught to work a problem until they have the answer.
I agree, but one has to admit that having a Ph.D. gives one a certain degree of credibility because they have a certification of sorts that says "I have identified a problem or question and either solved or investigated that problem to a degree that helps the rest of the world understand a little more than we did before." Furthermore, that degree demonstrates to me that this person can work hard, can solve problems and communicate. Ph.D.s are difficult to obtain because they require hard work and dedication. I value people that work hard, are independent and have a passion for what they do, and that includes folks with and without "degrees", but don't disparage someone because you might think you are an intellectual elitist. After all, the first thing groups like the nazis and the communists do is get rid of those who are independent thinkers because they represent a threat to the established way of thought and are harder to manipulate intellectually than those who are uneducated. We need folks who can think, so give props where due, eh?
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's less likely to be flawed than that of some marketer making guesses somewhere. It's far less likely to be incomplete than some random slashdot post. I trust a Ph D to at least THINK before making a judgment...I am not such an anti-intellectual anarchist snob that I can automatically assume that school is a tool of the system and all doctoral students are mindless sheep. But hey, maybe I just don't read enough Cat and Girl comics.
Not possible to protect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as AAC has already been broken using their own player, I think that point is pretty well proven. It's not possible to protect digital content, if by "protect" you mean preventing copying.
A CEO who really uses his industry's technology... (Score:5, 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...
heh (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't seen one "copy protection" scheme that has actually worked yet and I don't expect to see any in the future either. It's trivial to take the songs off an iPod and people are starting to unravel the DRM on the iTunes music store files - give it time ...
I've given up on iTunes, Nap2, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
If the RIAA wants the legal downloads to flourish, they should get serious about selling the music.
Supply and Demand still work (Score:5, Insightful)
When music is hard to get (low supply) and people want it (demand goes up) the price goes up. Look at live music back in the time of Bach or Beethoven. The average person could not afford it -- so only the rich had the best music. The poor had their "opera houses" that were not very safe and did not sound very good.
When music started to get more accessible (records and then tapes) and cheaper, supply went up, and demand went down, so the price went down.
As music became popularized through more radio productions and later television productions (MTV, etc), the supply went way up, the demand went way up, so the prices stayed consistent. The record labels charged what people were willing to pay. If the people were not willing to pay $18 for a CD, the prices would have come DOWN (supply up, demand down, prices drop).
Now we have the Internet. Supply goes up immensely, and demand to pay $18 a CD goes away. Therefore demand has dropped at that price, so the price has basically dropped. Some people pay $18, some people want it for free. Of course the record labels earn "less" per person per song. But the distribution cycle is so different, therefore you have to really look at the supply and demand issues differently.
If the incentive to produce "good" music goes down (less profit), then "good" music will diminish. As there is less and less "good" music, the supply will go down. Demand for "good" music will go up. People who are taking music for free will have less and less music to take for free. The free market over rides copyright and other bad laws by removing the supply of good music, as the incentive to profit is lost.
This is what will happen over time. Music production houses will find that they can make more money selling their popular tunes to TV commercials, movies soundtracks, nightclubs, and other places. Those songs will eventually be thrown into the virtual "public domain" of the Internet, but the cost to produce the music will be a function of the price of a movie, the cost to enter a nightclub, or the cost of a shampoo or fragrance or whatever it is that uses the song for its background music in a commercial.
You can regulate, you can mandate, you can tax. But you can't run from the rules of supply and demand.
Apple's IP (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, you hear that MS? Don't go copying any of Panther's UI or else we'll bring Scully back and settle with you for an undisclosed sum.
Subscription model (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft has been reasonably successful in forcing a subscription model on their customers, in the form of "Software Assurance". So has the cable TV industry. If you have a monopoly, you can do it.
Right in line with me (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that this model is perfect for the vast majority of people.
There's one hitch that's not often talked about, though. It is that the "share music locally" doesn't work with purchased music. So, the CDs I've bought can be shared on my LAN, but my legally "purchased" music can't (unless I authorize those computers to play my stuff).
I don't think that this makes any sense from any angle, except a bit of buckling to RIAA et. al. If I can share what I bought on physical media, why can't I share what I bought digitally. Of course, one of the things I most want to share is new tunes I've grabbed, and I don't want to go around authorizing/deauthorizing my colleauges' machines. Hopefully, they'll find a way to enable sharing of ITMS purchases in the future.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
"And Apple is in a pretty interesting position. Because, as you may know, almost every song and CD is made on a Mac -- it's recorded on a Mac, it's mixed on a Mac, the artwork's done on a Mac. Almost every artist I've met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods."
And this affects what system the music gets played on in what way? Most american homes are made from Canadian lumber, but that doesn't make me more likely to want to become a Canadian. I suppose it's nice self-back-scratching.
And, of course, most of those top music execs probably got their iPods for free during the negotiations. Heck, if I knew somebody who didn't have a PC or email in 2001, I sure as heck wouldn't try to get them to use a 2 year old Archos jukebox!
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
I agree, except about the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
How about movies? Do you see an iTunes movie store?
"We don't think that's what people want. A movie takes forever to download -- there's no instant gratification."
Right now, on a good cable connection, it takes about 30-45 minutes to download a good quality mpeg4 version movie (at 700Kbs). Cable can easily increase its bandwidth over time (not so easy with DSL), so that time interval will be decreasing. As more and more people have access to faster and faster connectivity, Jobs statement will become meaningless (as it already has for the fastest cable users). The quality of the movies will increase as well, to fill the available bandwidth.
The movie studios should NOT make the same mistakes that the music industry did. They should start offering legitimate good quality legal downloads NOW, before too many people start thinking about movies the way they do mp3s.
Re:I agree, except about the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
30-45 minutes isn't even in the same ballpark. That's longer than it would take me to walk to Blockbuster and get it on DVD. (Not to mention that you'll only get 700K/sec off a swarm system like BitTorrent, so you can't even start playing the unfinished movie like you can with true streaming or VOD.)
I'm sure legal movie downloads will eventually arrive, but with current technology Steve is correct that there is no instant gratification.
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.
Rip Mix Burn (Score:5, Insightful)
The person who assailed us over it was Michael Eisner. But he didn't have any teenage kids living at home, and he didn't have any teenage kids working at Disney whom he talked to, so he thought "rip" meant "rip off." And when somebody actually clued him in to what it meant, he did apologize.
You know, that says so much about Disney and their current state of affairs.
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!
Cheap alternatives to so-called "piracy" (Score:3, Informative)
Ever heard about iRATE? [sourceforge.net]
Free, legal music downloads [goingware.com]... it's even tuned to your taste! And yes, it does run on linux (and on Windows, and on MacOSX).
OK, maybe the interface isn't so sexy as iTune's... but it's still worth a try, imho. It worked great for me :)
From the interview: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive so that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Bullshit. Look at the Open Source movement.
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.
Why isn't music like magazines? (Score:4, Insightful)
RIAA, Denial, Money for nothin' (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA doesn't want to provide "value". They want to get paid for doing something which is essentially worthless--the act of copying the song to the media and distributing it to us. Hello, RIAA--we've got that one under control. You're fired; your job has been replaced by a computer.
As long as RIAA insists on getting something for nothing, there will be no foldouts, posters, 12" full-color art prints, etc.
I agree that RIAA needs to go back to their old business model. (maybe without the abusive artist contracts). Find something they can produce in quantity for a $3-5 a pop. Something that costs an individual user $20 to produce as a one-off. And charge $10.00 for it.
But in order to do that, they're going to have to let go of the idea that they can just sit back and let the money roll in.
Those days are over. Denial is the issue here. RIAA is going to start having to work for their bread. It's going to take a few bloody noses in the financial department for them to realize that.
Funny thing is--this is exactly the issue that RIAA raises when pointing fingers. "You're stealing. You want something for nothing." Point your finger, RIAA. Now, look at your hand. There's 3 fingers pointing right back at you.
Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Music Industry (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument holds up, if we ignore one gigantic, gargantuan, glaring fact: the music industry has a monopoly.
So, is it that they find, like so many diamonds in the rough, the better acts, or would the more accurate portrayal be that they, being the only means of distribution, exploit the best talent? The monopoly makes the answer impossible to determine, since there is no free market going on in music.
The same is true of the moral argument around file sharing. People who protect the current system seem to forget that they're protecting an arguably illegal cartel that inarguably price-gouges them. That the music industry has a monopoly and abuses it, again, clouds the whole issue.
Underneath the clouds, I think the real problem the music industry faces is life without a monopoly. Their abuse of the consumer has caused an alternative means of distribution to crop up that seems impervious to the laws that the industry has, in the past, been able to bend to its will. They had a unique thing - a guarantee of revenue. What a business! But now it's evaporating, and they'll have to actually compete for their food, like the rest of us.
Jobs probably doesn't have it wrong; he's just politicing. He has to, now that he's in bed with the music guys.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it shows that there isn't a large enough market for subscription base. Those people are the hardcore music listeners, they are the minority. Most people listen to a song on the radio and say "wooooo that is catchy" and pay and download it and be done.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, the way the music industry has always solved the lack of content problem is to release a few tracks from each album slowly, over a few weeks, then release some more album tracks from groups in the same genre.
That seems to be the antithesis of the instant gratification model that iTunes offers, which is essentially what the info age is all about. The entertainment industry in general seems to have a ton of people who are very good at doing what has been done, but very few (none at all?) visionaries.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:4, Insightful)
An "all you can eat buffet" works as a business concept, because everybody eats dinner once per evening, and they almost everybody eats 1 - 3 plate loads of food.
Most music consumers are broken into two groups: Those who only buy about one album a month or less, for whom the subscription model is not worth the money, and those who would be downloading music several hours each week, off whom you would not be making a profit.
So, the customers who you do get, you get at a loss, and nobody else will sign up for your service. Not really a situation that lends itself to profit, is it?
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.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing I've noticed about iTMS is that I have purchased a lot of music that I actually like. Because I have to pay per song I'm pickier about what I download and I don't feel any preasure to download X number of songs in a month just to feel like I got my monies worth.
Subscription is great if the source has a lot of stuff you like and you don't have much of an established collection.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm doing that more or less right now. It's called Rhapsody. I'm paying $10 a month and I can play any of their 300,000 songs whenever I want. For $1, I can burn a song to disc.
There are a few cons to it, though:
- I can't keep the music I download. If I unsubscribe, I cannot play the music anymore.
- It uses a custom client. Linux users need not apply.
- Not every song is available for purchase, but on the plus side at least I can listen to it.
- I *must* be on-line to listen to the music.
- No uploading to your music player, unless ya burn the CD and re-encode it. Ouch.
Those negatives sound bad, right? So why do I do it?
- $10 a month is less than one-album a month. No more CD purchases for me.
- The search engine's great. I'm able to find just about any song that intrigues me, and have it playing within moments. It's pretty good at helping me find other music I might like as well. It has everything neatly cross-referenced. "If you like Prodigy, you might like Chemical Brothers", etc.
- The internet thing kind of sucks (no taking my music on the road), but most of my 16 waking hours are nearby a net connection. I have wireless set up at home so it is not often that I find myself unable to listen to the music.
- Fast fast fast. It's not streaming in the RealPlayer sense. It starts downloading into a cache, and once a few blocks are down it starts playing. Rhapsody, by default, sets up a 1 gig cache to store the music in. So unless you have a LOT of songs on your playlist, they don't disappear. So it's not like you have to have broadband to listen to the music. (Though it helps for the initial download.)
It sounds like this might be the service you're looking for. I can tell you I'm happy with it. If I unsubscribe, I'm really going to miss it. You may find yourself in the same situation. If you go to www.listen.com you can try it free for a week.
Cheers
Re:Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Relying on services seems kind of retarded, when so many other Windows programs are able to perform similar tasks without needing to do so. I can only imagine they did so to allow the Windows version to mimick the BSD based Macintosh version, and thus cut down a bit on redundant development.
Since Win98's kernel does not support services, Apple would have to completely rewrite the program for an OS which is 6 years old and generally only used by computers that are too underpowered to run iTunes in the first place. Sounds like an egregious waste of resources to me, but hey, what do I know. I only do this for a living.
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:inarguably ungratifying (Score:4, Informative)