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Someone needs to take this guy out. He is the devil. The planets alignged when he was a baby, and a witch tatooed a 666 on his forehead, which is why he always has bangs.

I say we cast him into economic outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And when he realizes he is in the music equivalent of gehenna, we will enlighten him with our enlightenment sticks until he cries uncle and makes a case for me being president.

God told me so...

PR

p.s. - Jerry Falwell agrees.

Wireless music, AKA Ringtones, is the biggest scam out there. Really. Why should people play HUGE prices for stuff they might already own? Why not just allow people to put music from their iTunes or MP3 collection on their phones? It makes no sense at all. The phone industry is the worst. Monopoly. Locking people into contracts.

I'm hoping the iPhone will be the first step against the phone industry.

MDNews Magic Word: "Decision" as in "I've made the decision to stick it to the man"

Why is he warning them? How did Apple suddenly become the big meanie in the music industry? Just because they aren't sharing the profits from iPods this guy has to get all pissy and start painting Apple as the enemy.

Screw this guy. If the shareholders of Warner knew what was good for them they would throw this guy out on his ass.

They can either choose to cooperate and make this thing better or they can lose the whole thing over the next 10 years.

buggy whips

If there's a pink elephant in the room, it had better be me.

I love reading these daily updates from 3GSM about iPhone this, iPhone that...and its not even on the market yet!
The mobile phone market is ripe for disruption - and the impact Apple's entry has made on these 'established players' just confirms the obvious.

MW better - they'd better watch out for Apple!

From:Artists Everywhere
To: Steve Jobs and The Record industry.


Steve we greatly appreciate the products you and Apple bring to market. They help us create art and enjoy the art of others.

I have yet to meet an artist who is happy with their relationship with the record companies.

Record companies take a ridiculous premium of what an artist makes for them.

What artists dream of doing is being able to sell their music directly to their fans.

Artists would rather give that money to a company that knows how to create truly innovative technology fulfilling that dream. Both Apple and Artists would gain from this relationship.

Apple should allows artists to upload their music directly to itunes for sale.

This is the message.

Give us the platform.

Say goodbye to the old ways. Embrace this future.

Set asside the DRM issue for a moment. What is the guy Bronfman really afraid of?

He's saying to the mobile phone makers, "Don't be like Rio, Creative and all those other MP3 player makers. Apple is coming and they're going to take away all your business if you don't beat them at their own game."

He's afraid that Apple is going to be the only company who can sell his music digitally.

MDN magic word: given
As In: Sorry Bronfman. It is already a given.

So..... the choice will be the iPhone with all the songs you have already bought via CDs and iTunes at 99c each versus the mobile industry DRM music at $3 per track which you lose each two years when you upgrade your phone.

Not really a choice. The middle man is about to go away...

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Can you imagine what it must have been like when the rumor began to spread the the world was round? Very similar to the level of denial in our societies today that Apple is not going out of business, but rather, is actually thriving. Hell, they've even been called a 'freight train.'

Good luck competing with Apple in this arena, Mr. Bronfman. Gooooood luck there buddy, because you're about to get housed.

Well, you gotta give him credit for at least seeing the train that's about to run them over.

Actually, jobs is being a bit disingenuous about the 3% thing.

As time goes on, downloaded content will become the dominant sales method.

Eventually, if Gates is right, and in this I think he is, there will be no more hard copies of content sold.

When that happens, either all content will have DRM, meaning no more copying from non-DRM'd sources, or nothing will have DRM.

Bronfmam sees that. Their way, everything will have DRM. Job's way, nothing will have it.

I'm not speaking here either for or against DRM, but just what the alternatives can be.

My only regret is that Apple couldnt have kept this thing a complete secret until the FedEx trucks started unloading these things at Apple retail stores.

The thrown chair/crapped pants totals would be much higher than they already are.

MW 'sound' as in "Stop children, what's that sound..."

Wow, that's some influence.

Apple hasn't sold a single iPhone and it's already spurred some creative discussions within the industry.

See how competition drive improvement.

The customer wins.

pay close attention to what happens over the next 6 months.
1) Apple needs to renegotiate with the Labels. So everybody is busy posturing: the Labels want anybody else to be in competition with Apple so they can negotiate from strength. Currently it does not seem to be happening.
2) Apple Inc. has settled the lawsuit with Apple Corps. This frees Apple up to enter the "music" business. If negotiations with the Labels turn nasty, I predict that iTunes will become its own label with artist getting paid directly from Apple for the songs that are downloaded. If this happens, the Labels need to be very scared.

The otherMark has it right. I'm expecting this as well....

Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks, finds a survey.

The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms.

Analyst Mark Mulligan, one of the authors of the report, said the survey was carried out between December and January. This was before Apple boss Steve Jobs published his thoughts on music DRM and galvanised the debate about these protection systems.

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/12629/

There's that word again...

"Interoperate"

That's apparently becoming the new buzz word that those companies who want something but can't have it will say needs to be provided because they want their slice of the revenue from that pie.

I take great encouragement from seeing that some of these people are very concerned about the threat from Apple.

To his credit, Bronfman is at least aware of the threat, but doesn't seem to have a practical response. Most of his colleagues prefer to bluster about how the iPhone will fail because it isn't like existing phones.

As a consumer, I reckon that anything that can threaten the mobile phone industry AND the music industry at the same time has got to be a great thing and I look forward to seeing how it all pans out.

Thanks for the deleting.

The iPhone look alikes are already on the way...

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4659

Hold on, wasn't Edgar "I'd be a non-entity if my ancestors hadn't made a huge amount of money during Prohibition" Bronfman Jr. one of those who has spent a lot of the last couple of years arguing that people should pay more for their digital music and using the pricing model for ringtones as the justification for that point of view.

What's changed?

Hmmm…could it be that, having run Universal's film and music interests into the ground and having now decided to inflict his innate genius on Warner Mucous Group, he's realised that he's actually bought into a market that is on the verge a cataclysmic shift and he's trying to make as much as he can before he pisses away the family fortune?

I wish that Apple, who are now free of The Tiresome Twosome (previously known as The Fab Four), would buy a controlling interest in either WMG or EMI and put these c••ksu••ers on the scrapheap where they belong.

WMG is now trading at a 52-week low and could be bought with the money that Apple keeps under the mattress (around $2.7 billion, EMI Group could be purchased for around $3.3 billion).

Come on, Steve - flash the cash and piss off some music industry executives; how does it get any better?

I can't imagine myself buying digital entertainment for a phone. I'll take a data plan if I must, but a ringtone? A music track? A TV program? A Paris Hilton video? Never have and never will. Uploading stuff I own to a phone would be a different matter.

On average, Bronfman said, it can take a person 20 clicks to buy a ringtone, depending on the carrier network the consumer is using.

Yep, 20-clicks for a ringtone, and they keep coming on a weekly basis charged to your bill until you can figure out the 120-clicks that cancel the service. Isn't that how they work?

If Apple Corps were to sell Beatles songs on ITMS DRM free, THAT would get everyones attention!!!

"If Apple Corps were to sell Beatles songs on ITMS DRM free, THAT would get everyones attention!!!"

Better still, have an iTunes Super Store, containing only DRM-free music, but at higher sample rates than ordinary iTS music. Give the customers a double improvement and at the same time eliminate confusion about which tracks have DRM and which don't.

Bronfman should be on the comedy circuit - this is just TOOOO funny!!!

The problem with music download sales via wireless phone is simple. It's the wireless phone. That's what makes it cumbersome and expensive. Unless I missed something, nothing will change with iPhone in terms of how online sales are made; you still use a computer to buy and download the media file, and then sync it to your iPhone. So iTunes will remain dominant, and perhaps iPhone will make it more dominant. There's nothing the wireless companies can do about that, because they are still stuck trying to sell the media over the wireless phone.

But... I wouldn't be surprised if Apple added the capability to access the iTunes Store directly from iPhone at some point in the future. This would allow people who are "tech-phobic" to simply buy an iPhone as their iPod (the phone and web functions will be secondary). If you no longer need a computer to use an "iPod," that opens up a huge untapped market for Apple, and such customers will be buying ALL of their media from the iTunes Store.

I'm also going to take a pot shot at why piracy is so high

1. Most pirates are passionate about music. In order to feed that passion you have to find new music continually.
2. No one is going to pay $10 when trying to discover music, consistently anymore.
3. We have devices (iPod) that demand being filled with enormous amount of diversity.

The record industry needs to come to the realisation:

1. Things have changed so dramatically that the old model is complete history and no chance in reverting
2. Lots of some money is better than very little of high money (see their pushing of subscriptions)
3. The retail value of a quality song is equal to the effort attempting to find a similar quality song.

If the record industry has any chance at future relevance, I think it must look at doing the following:

1. Remove DRM
2. Reduce the charge per song to somewhere between 15-30 cents.
3. Continually flood the P2P networks with corrupted, ultra-low quality and spoof songs.
4. Ignore the Wal-mart and Amazon's cry for "you're selling digital songs too cheap" (CDs are instrinsic to the old model)

Warner Music just posted an $18 Million dollar profit last quarter. Compare that to Apple's $1 Billion dollar profit and you get the picture. Warner is financially irrelevant in comparison to Apple and they need to be aware of this.

I made a similar post on another related topic this morning...

We need a new paradigm for rewarding the artists. DRM works reasonably well in the Apple environment - it protects the rights of the copyright holder while providing for just about anything a user might reasonably want to do. But, as SJ point out in his letter, it depends on being able to keep one step ahead of the hackers.

A new paradigm would need to:

- ensure a return to the artist which is matched to the relative popularity of their art
- allow music to be circulated and shared freely without constraint
- ensure all music users make a fair contribution

Perhaps SJ is working on this as we speak? Lets hope so. The DRM wars are going to hamper this industry, along with the video industry, for years to come. To see how look at what the BBC is doing by ensuring that their content will only be available to Windows users. Its madness.

The first point is relatively easy - the iTunes store could allow direct uploads by an artist, bypassing the entire music publishing industry. Thats something of a pants-dirtying scenario if you work for a record label...

The second point makes the first point more practical - a totally free market for music will change the way we think about music, and the way we use it. Music will become an even greater part of our lives when it can be freely incorporated into anything we do. If you "discover" a great new piece of music, you can introduce it to all your friends, link it to your personal website, add it to your "what am i listening to now" playlist etc etc.

So the challenge is in the third point. Some people will happily pay for anything they use - others will always find a way to justify not paying...

Here is one suggestion. It will be full of holes probably, but that just shows how tough it will be to crack this nut. But here goes:

Lets see what Apple could do all by themselves:

Say a portion of every iPod sale was set aside for the artists. Every iPod recorded the number of times a piece of music was played, and reported this back to iTunes every time you connected. The total pool of money was then distributed directly to the artist in direct proportion to the number of times the track was played. There would be no incentive to cheat because you have already paid your contribution when you bought your iPod.

For the artist, uploading your new music would be easy and free. Digital music "broadcasters" would scan the new music on iTunes and create playlists much as a radio station does. If the music was popular the artist would be well paid. And the cost of this would be much less because the distribution system is so efficient. The revenue pool would eventually come from every sale of every player. There would be no DRM and the market would explode with choices. You would be able to listen to your music on a huge array of devices, and every time you bought a new player of any sort, you would be contributing to the pool of income for the artists. The artists could still engage marketing companies if they chose to, so there is still a role for the recording studios - only they would play more of a nurturing and marketing role.

What do you think?

ps: the industry contribution could be collected at the point of sale, just like a sales tax. it will require legislation to do this before DRM can be removed - but thats no biggie...

Another point... The payment is linked to the number of plays, not the purchase of the track. If you listen to a track 10 times more often than any other, the artist would be rewarded accordingly...