Apple presents iTunes - online music store

Apr 29 05:52 UTC 2003

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!!

response 2 of 81:

Apr 29 10:23 UTC 2003

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.

response 4 of 81:

Apr 29 13:56 UTC 2003

  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.

response 6 of 81:

Apr 29 16:57 UTC 2003

It's a decent idea. I just wish it was for non-Mac folks too. 

response 8 of 81:

Apr 30 21:44 UTC 2003

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.

response 10 of 81:

May 1 08:50 UTC 2003

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.

response 12 of 81:

May 1 19:34 UTC 2003

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.

response 14 of 81:

May 2 14:03 UTC 2003

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.

response 16 of 81:

May 2 18:28 UTC 2003

  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.

response 18 of 81:

May 2 23:44 UTC 2003

  My guess is that it's a token concession to DRM but that Apple knew that
  anything more restrictive would never fly with consumers..

response 20 of 81:

May 4 18:14 UTC 2003

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.