Hear hear ... Apple unveils a music store. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-998590.html Singles are 99cents for a download. Whats the catch?? The music format is AAC that can only be played on iPODs and MACs!!! Can you convert it to MP3? Don't know but I am just waiting for someone to come-up with an AAC to MP3 converter and then Apple (RIAA+others) suing people left, right and centre for converting AACs to MP3s. Let the fun begin!!81 responses total.
Though Apple's site says "And iPod is the only portable digital music player that supports the AAC format (Mac-only), which features CD- quality audio in smaller file sizes than MP3, so that even more songs fit on your iPod", googling for AAC reveals that it is supported by other vendors such as Nokia too. Heh, Did Apple derive its own propreitary AAC format??
Hmm. I'm actually considering a 2% investment in Apple precisely because of this. (Thats 1/5th of the 10% of my "equity" investment portion of my portfolio) Seems to me the way Apple have it structured they cannot lose even if it is a total and complete failure (as I suspect it will be) as they get their money up front (like some stock brokers who are smart enough not to play the market themselves). Also I seriously doubt Apple will be involved in any suits over format conversions (I think they will not be so stupid and can't speak for the demonstrated stupidity of RIAA et al as that is obvious, and they probably will). Here is the problem. Those of us with credit cards so that we can buy stuff over the Internet have probably already long since bought retail CDs of what we consider music and have probably burned copies for our own everyday use and passed copies off to our contemporaries. The probable vast majority of the problem the RIAA et al see and claim such huge losses from wouldn't know noise from music, have damaged hearing, and don't have access to their parents credit cards in order to buy legit CDs in the first place so won't have any way to purchase legit copies over the Internet even if it is only ninety-nine cents per cut or even if it was a penny per. Thus when the converted noise appears on the free networks at reduced fidelity they won't even notice and it will be business as usual.
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Hmm, what goes around comes around, eh? I remember that the vinyl singles of my youth (dont ask how OLD I am) used to cost $1 at the record store. Of course, you had to actually GO there and buy it, instead of downloading it. I'll tell you, this generation has it so darned easy.
I think there is a niche for something like this. The songs I've downloaded have always been when I just wanted one song. I've never downloaded a whole album, except in one or two cases where the album was out of print. If I want the whole album, I buy the CD. I just don't like buying a whole CD to get one song I like.
It's a decent idea. I just wish it was for non-Mac folks too.
I read the AP article, and I seem to remember reading that a Windows site would be coming out sometime soon.
Friends of mine that are mac addicts report that there will be a version of iTunes available on a PC platform by the end of the year, and that it will support the new "buy on demand" music system.
I've yet to see anyone make money on the business model of selling
something that's currently free but is being strongarmed legally.
Not if you are the vendor. But in this case Apple may have a chance as they are more like a stock broker. They don't actually own the product they are facilitating the purchase of. I do hope they got money up front from the music industry though.
((( Summer Agora #125 linked as Music #145 )))
Back before the web was universal, people made money selling shareware compilations. The idea seemed to be that going and getting each piece of software was just annoying enough that people would be willing to pay a few bucks to get them all at once on a disk. Given how flaky and unreliable the file sharing services I've tried have been, I might be willing to pay to download a good clean copy of a song from a reliable source. Similar idea, I guess -- you're paying for convenience, not for the product itself.
So there is hope yet, the convenience factor (and not having to spend time downloading a file only to listen to madonna saying "what the f*ck do you think you are doing"...(she's bright, that one))
I don't think I'd ever use the Apple service because of the DRM stuff that's tacked on. If I can't burn a music file to a CD or load it on my MP3 player, it's not much good to me.
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re #14: According to all the news stories I've read on the iTunes store, you *can* burn the downloads to audio CD, with the only mentioned restriction being that you cannot burn more than ten copies of the same playlist.
... which is an odd restriction, since one could burn one copy of the CD from the playlist and then make copies from that...
My guess is that it's a token concession to DRM but that Apple knew that anything more restrictive would never fly with consumers..
When I started buying western music about ten years back, a cassette used to cost Rs.40 or approx 80 cents. Yesterday, when I again bought a few, it cost me almost $5 each. Approximately, a whopping 600% jump!!!! What else has gone up by 600% in the last ten years?? Certainly not the quality of music. IMHO, at 99cents a song, it is still a rip-off. Maybe a group of artists will start to sell music online at lower rates??
Caren and I just got an iPod, and it's a brilliant little piece of technology. It frankly boggles my mind having gone from a PET computer with 16,384 precious bytes of memory back in fifth grade up to a compact little music machine that fits in the palm of your hand with room for 16,106,127,360 bytes of data. We signed up for the service yesterday, and downloaded a dozen songs by half a dozen different artists to replace a batch of six CDs that were lost when we were travelling. Simply brilliant - spending $12 and getting exactly what we wanted instead of nearly $100 on replacement CDs. If the RIAA had spent their money on innovation instead of lawyers and software sabotage, they'd have come out with this service three years ago.
I haven't owned anything from the Beetles since the days of vinyl. But today I'm going to make my own "Best of" album at 99c a song. I don't expect I'll use the service a whole lot but, if it works, it will be nice to have available.
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Sorry, I am talking about here in Oman. A CD costs RO 5.500 and a cassette costs RO 1.800 An Omani Rial is about $2.58. Thats $4.64 In India, the last I bought cassettes they were Rs125-Rs140. But that was about two years back. Sony has this special Indian edition CDs that cost only Rs250, thats about $5. Rest cost Rs.650, that is about $13. Comparitively, books are sold at 1/5th to 1/10th the price in India than what they are sold for in the US. Special asian or Indian edition books.
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Why are books/cds/etc. more cheap in India? That seems odd to me.
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I don't think it has anything to do with manufacturing costs or royalties. Its just plain marketing. If you sold a technical text book for $20 in India almost none of the students would buy it. It would end up getting photcopied and pirated. Now if you sold it for say $2-$4, all students will buy a copy (as they do). You have to remember that in volumes the Indian market for technical text books must be bigger than that of US+UK+other-English-speaking- countries. So its a BIG market and something that the publishers can't simply ignore. With more than 250 universities, 1,500 research institutions and 10,428 higher-education institutes, India churns out 200,000 engineering graduates and another 300,000 technically trained graduates every year. The local authors have local publishers and can sell a book at $2-$4, so to compete with them the foreign publishers must sell at similar prices. Low volume books are imported and sell at US prices for example medical textbooks. Heh, so lots of medical students buy pirated books. I wish the music publisher's take a hint from the book publishers and do more like what Sony is doing.
It's simple economics. If the population makes less money, you have to price your goods lower if you want to sell them. For a simple, local example, compare the cost of gas at the Meijer on Ann Arbor-Saline Road to the cost of gas at the one on Carpenter. ;) Last I checked it was seven cents cheaper per gallon on Carpenter Road.
So if they sell as tape for $5, everyone will make copies for their friends. If they sold it cheaper, people might buy originals.
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Yeah. But you can visit India and buy those books and read them in the US. My sis bought Rs. 50K of books on her first visit to India after she went to study in the US. Thats ... ummm ... $1000. But I guess the US value of those books would be anywhere between US $5k-$10k.
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The economic concept here is called "market segmentation," IIRC. It also happens on a geographic basis with medical drugs; on a "class" basis, it is used by the airline industry so they can charge thousands of dollars for a business traveller, but only hundreds for vacationers.
Part of that is because vacationers act in ways that help the airlines. For example, vacationers generally buy tickets a month or two in advance, which lets the airline plan ahead. Business travellers are always buying at the last minute and rescheduling their flights, which makes it harder for the airlines to ensure the planes will be full.
If that were the only consideration gull, the airlines would simply give a big discount for advance purchases. But they also have things like cheaper fares if you stay overnight saturday which is totally designed to offer cheaper fares to vacationers. An airline might offer a route between city A and city B because typically they can fill 75% of the plane with business travelers who are willing to pay say $400 for the flight. Vacationers arent so willing to spend the $400 because they have other options (they can spend their vacation at home for instance). The airlines use the "sat stay" requirement to offer the vacationers seats at $200 or even $100.
Amtrak offers cheaper fares if you buy in advance.
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Yes they do. I have to wonder how many people take Amtrak for business except for on the East Coast.
Last time I looked into taking Amtrak, it was cheaper to fly.
Opps. My #38 was a reply to #36. I agree with Sapna that not everyone wants to spend days and days getting to their destination. I have found that Amtrak is cheaper and more convenient than flying when one is going on a short trip. For example, Ann Arbor to Chicago. But even New York to Washington DC seems easier and cheaper too at least the last time I checked. Consider also that the train usually puts someone right downtown without the hassles of the airport. Still, I imagine that Amtrak probably has a smaller percentage of business travellers than the airlines. Even so, they probably could learn a thing or two from the airlines about ticket pricing. I think they are starting to do that. When I first started taking Amtrak, they pretty much had the same fares for everyone but now they have things like the "rail sale" on the website.
The trip that was cheaper by plane was Grand Rapids, MI to Seattle, WA. But supposedly the long transcontinental runs are the ones Amtrak has trouble making a profit on, so it makes sense that they'd be more expensive.
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Yeah. It takes three days and two nights to get to the west coast from here via train. That is a little long for business travel. However, it is perfect for folks who have a lot of time. FWIW, it is a great experience. I have gone to California on the train twice. The views are awesome. The people on the train are generally pretty neat. If you get a sleeper car (very expensive) it is *really* nice but coach isnt too bad.
They drag around a special car in which you can sit and look straight out the window (instead of sideways) and also some dining-type cars where they sell expensive potato chips and soda that they just took onboard from the supermarket at the previous stop. (On the transcontinental run). Unlike European trains, you cannot lie down in the train cheaply, you have to pay for a private compartment and the use of a shower. In Europe a six-person compartment can make up into a six-bunk compartment where you can all lie down for the night at reasonable cost. One reason not to travel long distances on American trains.
Do people listen to songs from the Apple music store on their iPods on these train trips?
Well, the Apple store didn't exist at the time, but I spent quite a bit of the time listening to my iPod on my Seattle to Oakland Amtrak trip this March. I doubt I'll ever choose to take a long-distance Amtrak trip again. Thanks to a special fare sale they were having, I managed to travel for about $30 less than if I had booked my travel by air, but it took about 24 hours to reach my destination and while I enjoyed watching the scenery on the first part of the trip, scenery wasn't much use to me after it got dark. The rail system does have some great right-of-ways towards the south end of the Puget Sound, running right along the water in some places. Very pretty, but you could get the same views on a much more enjoyable trip by just taking the segment between Seattle and Portland.
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The views from the train were much more interesting than those from the road, also when we are biking we tend to keep our eyes on the gravel surface. If the trains were full they would be cheaper than the planes.
re #47: could you? actively-used rail right-of-ways are generally off-limits for bicyclists and I don't recall seeing any parallel bike- or multi-use-paths..
I have only ever been on one short train trip and I did listen to my cassette player while on it. Nowadays, I'd take my mini-disc player. (I don't know if I will ever have an i-Pod, though it sounds cool.)
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There are some excellent reasons why you can't always get the same views from a bicycle that are available from the train. The first is the distance you ride above the ground on a train -- it makes a big difference. The second, and more crucial, is that train tracks, especially in the west, often run through some otherwise pretty inaccessible areas..
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True. You can also turn!
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And long bicycle rides are tough on the boys!! :-))
I was told once that the Pennsylvania Turnpike used to be a railroad right-of-way, and that's why there are so many tunnels. Any truth to that? I'm a bit skeptical.
I'd venture that it's because the state is in the Appalacians. Occam's
razor.
resp:57 is true. The original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, from Irwin to Carlisle across the mountains (roughly from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh) used the route of a planned Southern Pennsylvania railroad which was engineered and partly constructed, but never brought to service. The planned railroad was built to threaten the established northern Pennsylvania rail route, as part of a war between robber barons in the Gilded Age of the 1890's, if I remember correctly. The robber barons reached a financial settlement between themselves and the southern rail project was abandoned & left fallow until after World War II, when someone realized it would make a fabulous highway through difficult terrain. Source: PA Turnpike literature, hopefully remembered correctly. I bet there's an official Turnpike website. Do people listen to their iPods while driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?
<jaklumen smiles bemusedly as krj tries again and again to return discussion to the original topic>
re #59 - my friends who own iPods carry them everywhere, so I would assume that if they were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they would listen to their iPods ... (possibly through a cassette adapter plugged into their car's cassette player, or one of those FM modulators for cars without a cassette player)
what's an iPod and why is is sPelled in that pEculiar wAy?
(I bet it's spelled that way for the same reason that internet auction site calls itself eBay.)
iT's bEcause oF tHe iNfluence tHat mArketing hAs oN tHe wAy wE uSe oUr lAnguage. dOntcha jUst lOve iT?
re #62: An iPod is a portable personal music player sold by Apple. It can store hundreds of albums' worth of songs in MP3 or other computer music formats all in a package about the size and weight of a deck of cards that fits easily in your pocket.. ( http://www.apple.com/ipod/ ) If you like music and electronic gadgets it's a fantastic combination of the two..
Didn't the i-naming get started with the Apple iMac computer? They've just gotten carried away. I wonder if they copyrighted "i-".
Yes, it started with the iMac. Now the linguistically sensitive can iGag at iMac, iPod, iTunes, iCal, iMovie, iSync, iPhoto, iEtc..
...in fact, I'm posting this from my iBook.
If I manufacture a competing music player, can I call it an rPod? Or would Apple come after me for trademark infringement?
NyQuil started it anyways. "NyQuil, we love you, you giant f*n Q!"
Re #59: Huh. Those are some pretty steep grades for a railroad. Re #67: iLamp (my friend's nickname for the new iMac model)
The media still seems to be very optimistic about iTunes, at least from the last AP release I read. But the one criticism I remember hearing was that iTunes still lacks the selection of the major P2P servers (Kazaa, Grokster).
That's kind of crippled all the for-pay download services. The record labels are sort of dipping their toes in, providing only a tiny subset of their catalogs, when they really need to jump in with both feet.
Yes: a brick-and-mortar store with only a small selection isn't going to do well either, unless it's the only game in town.
re 70: I thought TouchTone and PhoneCenter where amoung the first uses of an additional CapitalLetter in a word.
The term I heard for that, when it was popular during the 80s, was "intercapping". Some companies that used to have intercapped names have dropped that feature. MicroSoft, for example. I still tend to use intercapped names for variables when I'm programming. In programming books I've seen it referred to as "camel notation", presumably because the name has a "hump" in the middle.
iCommune was released yesterday. It allows iTunes users to share all the music they payed a buck each cut for with each other over the Internet. I guess APPLE is liable for DMCA violation for releasing OS-X? Thank Bill there wasn't a WinDoze version of iTunes otherwise shot would have really hit the pan. http://icommune.sourceforge.net/
resp:63 - I'm not sure if that Internet auction site does call itself "eBay". Other people call it that, but its own logo is all small letters: "ebay".
i keep finding links to osX utils etc that allow one to play .ogg files. only all the links are no longer there. can anyone point me to a link or email me the component? thanks.
Recently krj was kind enough to send me some iTunes codes that he'd won in Pepsi's iTunes give-away promotion. Although I've owned an iPod for almost two years, redeeming the codes was my first experience with purchasing music from an on-line download service. All of the descriptions I've heard seem to say that Apple's iTunes Music Store has the best interface out there and among the biggest selections. Neither was awful but if this is really the best service that's available so far the industry still has a long way to go. The user experience, in particular, could stand some really obvious improvements (e.g. -- when you're listening to a preview sound clip it shouldn't stop abruptly if you continue browsing.) When Ken gave me his iTunes codes I thought "Cool, but this is going to wind up costing me at least 10 bucks in extra stuff I find and want to download," but in the end it was a bit of a struggle to find 8 tunes I was eager to download. I was also a bit put out by the intimidating service agreement and the sign-up process, though I eventually figured out how to use the free downloads without having to provide Apple with my credit card number. All in all it was an enlightening experience and I used the opportunity to download a bunch of singles off of albums I don't care to invest in. For that, if for no other purpose, it's nice to have iTunes and similar services, though I was thwarted by the unavailability of several selections before I found enough to fill my order. In the end, though it was more work to find them than I thought it would be, I wound up with a group of songs I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy (I'm listening to one of them right now (Jackson Browne's original version of "These Days", which I've been wanting to hear ever since I discovered the Golden Palominos' lovely cover version.) Thanks, Ken!
Chris Goosman was also kind enough to send me an iTunes code from the Pepsi promotion, too.. If anyone is holding on to codes with the intent of using them eventually, make sure you do something with them before April 30th, as they'll expire at that time..
You have several choices: