 Wired: Cult of Mac Blog from Wired.comRead Leander Kahney's latest commentary about Apple and Mac News in Wired.com's Cult of Mac Blog, including Mac, Mac Pro, MacBook, iMac, iBook, Mac mini, iPod video, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iPhoto, iPhone, Apple TV, OSX, Steve Jobs, and Macworld. http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/ другие подписчики этой ленты также читают >> |
- More Boring BS about Jobs
This amazing pic, which has nothing to do with the post below except it's got an iPod in it, is by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. It's the cockpit of a helicopter speeding up a valley in Hawaii. Spot the iPod....This amazing pic, which has nothing to do with the post below except it's got an iPod in it, is by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. It's the cockpit of a helicopter speeding up a valley in Hawaii. Spot the iPod. Jurvetson seems to have an enviably adventurous life.
Some thoughts about Jobs' thinking:
* Jobs' call to drop DRM has everything to do with the European governments' threats to legislate against iTunes if the system isn't opened up. But good old Jobso wants the consumer-friendly solution. Instead of licensing Apple's DRM to other companies, he wants to drop DRM altogether.
* Dropping DRM is probably a good way to expand the online music market -- to make it more frictionless, as economists say. Music piracy is already pretty frictionless. Bittorrent is unbelievably efficient for piracy. Instead of individual songs or albums, Bittorrent users are now trading entire discographies. Here's all the Black Eyed Peas albums, all The Decemberists albums, and here's all 5 DVDs of the Beatles Anthology.
* In the history of DRMs, Apple's is remarkably liberal, easy to use and rarely breaks down. Much to my surprise, there hasn't been a major backlash from consumers, or even that many complaints.
* This is certainly not the case with Microsoft's Plays For Sure system, which is so hard to administer, even Microsoft has abandoned it with the Zunes, opting for a much more iPod-like closed system.
* Jobs says Apple won't license Fairplay because it can't guarantee the safety of its cryptography (or "secrets," as he calls it), and may lose the labels' business. But there's got be a Plays for Sure element: it's too complex to deliver the seamless it-just-works Apple experience if dozens of other online music stores and hardware companies are involved. Co-ordinating software and firmware updates between several players just doesn't work, and is a proven marketplace failure.
* There is an element of lock-in with iTunes-purchased tunes, but the real iPod lock is the dock connector, and the hundreds of accessory companies that make gadgets for it.
* Randall Stross in the New York Times last month reports:
"... the major labels have watched their revenues decline about $10 billion since a 2001 peak; meanwhile, revenue earned by the independents has held steady. He said his service offers music from 9,800 labels, each of which has embraced downloads in MP3 format. Only four labels still cling to copy protection, even though piracy has not declined, and those are the four major labels."
Mr. McBride, of Nettwerk, predicted that in 2007 the major labels would finally move to drop copy protection in order to provide iPod owners the option of shopping at online music stores other than iTunes; by doing so, he added, they would "break the monopoly of Apple" that dictates terms and conditions for music industry suppliers and customers. Some encouraging signs have appeared recently. Dave Goldberg, the head of Yahoo Music, persuaded EMI to try some experiments last month with MP3 downloads — a Norah Jones single here, a Reliant K single there.
With sales of physical CDs falling faster than digital music sales are growing, he said, the major labels "have got to make it easier for people to do the right thing" — that is, to buy recorded music unencumbered with copy protection rather than to engage in illegal file-sharing."
lkahney - Why iTunes Isn't DRM Free -- Simple Licenses, or Maybe the iPhone
In response to the question why El Jobso doesn't already sell unprotected songs through iTunes, Jon Lech Johansen, the DVD hacker who is trying to license a crack of Apple's FairPlay copy protection system to other companies, says it's not...In response to the question why El Jobso doesn't already sell unprotected songs through iTunes, Jon Lech Johansen, the DVD hacker who is trying to license a crack of Apple's FairPlay copy protection system to other companies, says it's not a technical issue. A simple software patch to iTunes would allow Apple to sell unprotected songs in a couple of days.
Apple itself isn't talking. Randall Stross, reporting for the New York Times, asked this same question last month, but got nowhere. "I asked the company last week whether it would offer tracks without copy protection if the publisher did not insist on it: the Apple spokesman took my query and never got back to me."
Some interesting speculation comes from a reader called Jet Tredmont, who in the comments to yesterday's post, says it's a licensing issue:
"This is all very simple. Steve Jobs got a great deal worked out amongst the thousands of record companies worldwide with a very straightforward tactic: one contract, one set of terms, take it or leave it.
Apple didn't negotiate terms on a company-by-company, artist-by-artist, or even song-by-song basis. There is one contract, and if you want into the largest music store in the world, you sign. Period.
"One contract" is a much more powerful dictum than "two contracts", or "three contracts" or "eleventy-seven contracts". If there was one DRM contract and one non-DRM contract, the approach would not have worked.
At the same time, keeping the single contract simplicity helps Jobs push for industry-wide reform. I suspect that twelve to twenty-four months down the road the vast majority of record companies will have agreed to drop DRM. Now, what of the stragglers? Again: one contract. If you require DRM at that point still, then you can not play in the largest store in the world.
Period.
Simplicity is a great thing in business negotiations, as much or moreso than in the consumer market."
Edvarcl Heng, CNet Asia's "Audio Arsonist" columnist, says it's about selling tunes via Wi-Fi to the iPhone:
"One possible upshot (of removing DRM from online music) could be that it will throw a wrench into the carefully crafted over-the-air (OTA) DRM environment favored by cellular operators and music labels. Without encumbering DRM, cellular users may come to favor Apple's solution rather than the cellular operators' which typically locks music tracks into the phone itself. That could be a reason the iPhone has a Wi-Fi connection instead of 3G.
If the iPhone takes off, and there is a strong likelihood it will, this could allow Apple to continue its stranglehold on the online music space without paying toll charges to network operators. Indeed, as Sakeem Mobhani, COO for Bollywood content aggregator Hangama Mobile India, noted at the Music Matters Asia Pacific music forum last year, revenue sharing will become an issue between the content provider and the network operator. Who deserves a larger slice of the pie and how large would it be? By bypassing the networks, iTMS can retain a bigger share of the profits."
Maybe it's a business tactic to kill subscription models. As John Gruber at Daring Fireball notes, no DRM means no subscription music services:
"The whole point of a subscription service is that while you're paying, you can download all the music you want, but when you stop paying, all the music you've already downloaded stops working. That requires DRM."
lkahney - Bob Lefsetz
Bob Lefsetz, the music industry pundit who pens the long-running Lefsetz Letter, has a sparkling rant about Steve Jobs and the crummy state of the music biz. It's worth reading the lot, but here's how it starts: During the Super...Bob Lefsetz, the music industry pundit who pens the long-running Lefsetz Letter, has a sparkling rant about Steve Jobs and the crummy state of the music biz. It's worth reading the lot, but here's how it starts:
During the Super Bowl, Felice's 18 year old nephew and his UCLA buddy asked me what topic I was going to discuss on KLSX later that night. I asked them for suggestions. Blake said "THE iPHONE!" Digging deeper, I found that both had spent nearly two hours watching Jobs' Macworld speech and NEITHER owned A SINGLE APPLE PRODUCT!
But they aspired to. Blake said his next computer would be a Mac. "Have you ever tried one?" He said no, but he was ready to switch.
And I asked these two kids with Sidekicks if they'd lay down five hundred bucks for an iPhone… And they said AS SOON AS IT CAME OUT!
Wow, if only they had this passion about bands.
Everywhere I go, all the under twentysomethings want to talk about is Steve Jobs. And, if they've got the dough, which Luca and Blake are amassing, they drop it all on Apple equipment. And then tell EVERYBODY HOW FUCKING GREAT IT IS!
...
We Americans are looking for something to believe in. We can't believe in politicians. And we can't believe in the whored out musicians. But we can believe in Steve Jobs. The seemingly uncompromised guru who won't do just anything for a buck.
The labels wanted to raise the price at the iTunes Store?
Steve gave them the middle finger. Even though he could have blamed the price increase on them. Maybe even made more money. It just wasn't RIGHT!
Who the fuck makes decisions based on what's RIGHT anymore? I mean you do, but you've got no power. But here's a guy with ALL the money and ALL the power and he leaves all his alliances, all the BULLSHIT, out of his decision-making process.
lkahney
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