“The music industry has long resisted selling music in the MP3 format, which lacks the copy protections that prevent songs from being duplicated endlessly. But now, Blue Note Records and its marquee artist, jazz-pop singer Norah Jones, are selling her latest single through Yahoo Inc. as an MP3 — despite the risk that it may add to piracy problems… Another EMI act, Christian rock band Relient K, also released two MP3s through Yahoo yesterday,” Ethan Smith and Nick Wingfield report for The Wall Street Journal.
“The releases come as some high-tech and music-industry executives are becoming increasingly concerned about Apple’s growing clout in the music business. Only online music files purchased from iTunes, ripped from users’ own CDs or downloaded from pirate services can be played on the popular iPod. Copy-protected songs purchased from Yahoo and other legitimate sources don’t work on it. By selling music in the MP3 format without copy-protection software, Yahoo can offer music that works easily on iPods,” Smith and Wingfield report.
MacDailyNews Note: “Only online music files purchased from iTunes, ripped from users’ own CDs or downloaded from pirate services can be played on the popular iPod.” In other words, “only” all of the recorded music in the world can be played on iPods.
Smith and Wingfield continue, “The MP3 releases are coming as digital-music sales have stalled for the first time since Apple launched its iTunes Store in 2003. Digital track sales held steady at 137 million songs in the second and third quarters of this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That’s a slight drop from the 144 million sold in the first quarter.”
The Wall Street Journal provides the graphic seen on the left.
MacDailyNews Note: Digital-music sales have stalled for the first time since Apple launched its iTunes Store in 2003? Wait a second here. Are Smith and Wingfield incapable of basic pattern recognition? According to their own chart, third quarter 2005 showed a dip from the previous quarter – that would be the first so-called “stall.” Third quarter 2006 shows a flat result versus the previous quarter. In both years, the fourth quarter set records. We predict the same for this year. Furthermore, since each individual quarter shows healthy year-over-year increases there is no evidence whatsoever that “digital-music sales have stalled.” Next year, when third quarter again shows the same results, we hope reporters can forget the annual “digital-music sales have stalled” nonsense and look instead at the seasonal patterns that are clearly shown in their own accompanying graphics. Expect to see strong first quarters as Christmas iTunes gift certificates are redeemed mostly during that quarter. Gift certificate sales did not impact iTunes sales strongly until last year.
Smith and Wingfield continue, “For Yahoo, the deal with EMI represents another step in a long-running effort by David Goldberg, the vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music, to persuade recording companies to abandon their insistence on antipiracy software. Mr. Goldberg publicly floated the proposal at a music industry conference in February, but initially found few takers.
“His reasoning: Antipiracy software on music isn’t helping the industry because the same music is already available without copy protection on CDs and through Internet file-sharing programs. What’s more, many consumers don’t like the limitations that copy protection imposes on how and on which devices they can listen to their music. If DRM benefits anyone, Mr. Goldberg argued, it’s technology companies like Apple, because it makes it trickier for consumers that have made hefty purchases of digital music through iTunes to switch to non-Apple music devices in the future,” Smith and Wingfield report.
Smith and Wingfield report, “For music executives, allowing Apple to gain increasing control over digital music sales — iTunes accounts for more than 90% of the tracks sold online some weeks, according to people who work in the music industry — is shaping up as the latest in a long series of strategic blunders that have helped create powerful new gatekeepers between them and their customers. (Past middlemen have included radio broadcasters, MTV and big retailers like Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.”
Full article here.
The music industry did not “allow” Apple to gain increasing control over digital music sales. The music industry has deals with all the other online music stores, too. People buy 90% of the tracks sold online from Apple iTunes Store because Apple did it right. Apple took increasing control over digital music sales because, as usual, they made the best solution. Apple earned their market dominance through hard work and keeping the customer experience foremost in mind. We encourage the music labels to sell quality tracks without DRM, as DRM obviously does not work to prohibit music piracy, anyway.
click-click-bloody click pancakes!
Clearly some very subtle FUD going on, here, folks.
“Only” indeed…
We’ll definitely need to help out our less observant friends with the distinction MDN so plainly makes in their first take.
Well, that’s funny… I’ve been having no problems playing my purchased songs from eMusic on iTunes and my iPod.
These authors are donkeys.
“The music industry has long resisted selling music in the MP3 format, which lacks the copy protections that prevent songs from being duplicated endlessly.”
Uh…uh…almost too much to bear. Adding DRM to MP3 is possible. They do not mean MP3, they mean “format with no DRM.”
“But now, Blue Note Records and its marquee artist, jazz-pop singer Norah Jones, are selling her latest single through Yahoo Inc. as an MP3 — despite the risk that it may add to piracy problems…”
This is just a stupid sentence.
“Only online music files purchased from iTunes, ripped from users’ own CDs or downloaded from pirate services can be played on the popular iPod. “
There are several legitimate online music stores that sell music without DRM, including in the unDRMable MP3 format. Bleep! Beatport, etc.
“”For music executives, allowing Apple to gain increasing control over digital music sales — iTunes accounts for more than 90% of the tracks sold online some weeks, according to people who work in the music industry — is shaping up as the latest in a long series of strategic blunders that have helped create powerful new gatekeepers between them and their customers”
Right, they “allowed” Apple to gain control of digital music sales. The fscking execs did not have the first fscking clue how to distribute music online in a manner that was useful to any consumer. They would have continued plundering along, bitching about piracy, and worked at putting DRM on CDs. Apple created the music download business as it exists today. What other company would have actually stood their ground to the labels on the pricing? None. Microshaft would have done their usual roll-over-and-expose-their-belly trick. Sony, even having iTMS as an example, put out a lump of crap.
The major labels are fortunate that Apple created the music download business for them. Strategic blunder? If anything, keeping a sane, consumer-friendly middleman assures that the labels won’t be able to kill the goose long before it lays the golden egg.
The analysis is complete bullsh*t. If these people used their head instead of spreadsheets, they might be able to figure it out.
1- Many people bought music they used to have, favorite cuts from albums, tapes and CDs long gone, building up their library. Others bought music they already owned, instead of sitting all weekend, ripping CD after CD (not to mention the wear & tear on your optical drive). Once you have a nice collection built up, your buying is going to slow down.
2- iPod sales have not been all made to unique users. Many people are on their second or third iPod and don’t need new music purchases to stock it.
3- Some iPod users, primarily Jazz and Classical music fans, will not accept 128 AAC for their music. It’s O.K. for pop, oldies from the pre-digital era and guilty pleasures, but sucks for critical listening. Compare Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason or Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms at 128 AAC to lossless or VBR and you will see it’s true of a lot of good Rock & Roll.
4- Many have figured out that they can go to the used CD section, buy a complete album for $5-7, rip it at the rate of their choosing without DRM and sell the disc back for $2-3. Compare $9.99 for iTunes to net $3-5 bucks at the local used music store. I’d say that is a no brainer.
The RIAA member business model is broken and the big money reselling the same catalog over and over (different formats) is through. As a boomer I have purchased some music on cassette, LP, and CD. Do they think I am going to buy all of that again? Not on your life- sue me. How many times can they expect to re-sell us the same music? Instead of suing 12 year olds they ought to hit the clubs and sign some artists. The could actually front people money so they they can tour more widely and build an audience. The record companies used to do that, but the megas rarely do now.
The easy money is gone. It’s time to go to work.
WTF?,
you’re being very hard on donkeys, comparing them to these morons.
But otherwise I agree with everything you wrote.
not just because of competition with apple, or their other justification, but because they’ve tied their fate to microsoft, wma, and the soon to be defunct “play for sure”. microsoft has screwed every partner in the legit downloadable music arena. they can’t “harmonize” their tracks like real did ’cause, well, “harmony” didn’t do a lick of good for real; due to apple updating fairplay et all to block that move. who knows how successful dvd john is going to be w/his reverse engineer license blah blah, and may be breaking the law. the only solution for yahoo “no drm” mp3.
mw “indeed” how appropriate.
I’m never quite understood the issue people have with using other online download services….burn a cd, rip it back in. If you’re buying online, you don’t care too much about the quality anyway. Sheesh folks.
Different Take,
yes, my iPod is full of jazz and classical music (with some rock and blues), and it’s all in lossless.
I think there are more of us than Apple thinks. There’s a big on-line market out there (i.e. the whole world) for quality music in a quality format.
For me it’s one of Apple’s two big mistakes. The other one is not introducing a ‘normal’ computer, something between a mini and a Mac pro (in price and size) and with slots of course.
This is a developing industry and who knows where it will take us.
Like many, I usually only buy CDs at around $6 a piece and rip them at 192 kbps. I’ve tried lossless but didn’t notice a difference with the best system I have.
AAC is supposed to have better compression than MP3 – won’t this affect performance at the same bit rate?
“Only online music files purchased from iTunes, ripped from users’ own CDs or downloaded from pirate services can be played on the popular iPod.”
In other words, everything except protected WMA files.
I wonder what bit rate these Yahoo MP3 files are; if they’re only 128kbps or something more reasonable like 196.
To: Huh,
Shut the fsck up! Apple/ipod/itunes rules. Stick with your plays for shit and Zune bullshit. We don’t need fsckers like you in the Apple fraternity.
Harsh words? Yes. But I reiterate, these idiots can suck on the micro$haft dick all they want. Meanwhile, we’re light years ahead and not looking back.
Micro$haft pricks! I hate those shyster motherfsckers!!
MDN: sales have indeed stalled looking at the figures. In previous years Q1 sales were exceeded in Q2, Q3, and Q4. But this year sales went down in Q2 and Q3. WSJ got it right – learn to count MDN.
As to your other point, not all of the recorded music in the world can be played on iPods – music purchased from other stores is not compatible remember. The FUD is all MDNs.
MDN is an anonymous liar.
Marksf1
You’re entitled to your view but there are a lot of people out there who won’t touch “near cd quality” music and that’s what the iTunes Store is. Now I know this will get people screaming but I’ve been using allofmp3 for the last six months because I could specify the bit rate and choose the encoding I want. I chose AAC @320kbps. I then imported the music into iTunes, burnt the music onto a cd and then reimported it into iTunes at 224kbps. Frankly I wouldn’t mind paying more via allofmp3 because of the music quality I was able to purchase.
Similarly, a lot of my music that I transferred onto our ipods was old music from our collection and music purchased from sales. What I refuse to do however is buy retail cds (overpriced) or inferior downloaded music.
I don’t know whose decision it was to go for the lower bit rate at iTunes; Apple or the record companies. Either way, in my opinion it’s an inferior product and as Different Take puts it many music lovers would rather buy a second hand quality product that a second rate new product.
So yet again the record industry doesn’t understand their market. My students (18 – 22 year olds) were amazed that I was actually buying music and I truly believe that this whole copyright issue will be over and done with in the next ten years. Why? Because there is a whole generation out there who refuse to pay ANYTHING for music (or movies for that matter). And that’s an issue that the music industry has to deal with.
The numbers just didn’t hit me as accurate so I looked up other numbers I know to have been released.
iTunes mile markers:
Jan 24, 2005 – 250 million
July 18, 2005 – 500 million
Feb 23, 2006 – 1 billion
So I’m confused at Nielson Soundscan’s numbers…
Jan 24 – July 18, 2005 (250 million songs in 175 days)
Nielsen shows approximately 160 million in 180 days.
July 18, 2005 – Feb 23, 2006 (500 million songs in 220 days)
Neilson shows approximately 350 million in 290 days.
This doesn’t include sales from any other service except iTunes. I know other online music services actually sold songs. And I’m sure subscription music has a difficult time being figured into this number. So how accurate is it?
If their numbers are off by 33 million+ per quarter, how credible is their claim of a 7 million-song drop? I’ve read argument about what percentage of the iTunes numbers are “free-downloads of the week.” Some say it’s all sales, some say it’s all downloads (sold or free) total. Still, in each case over 33% of iTunes numbers would have to be free downloads, doubtful. It’s Nielson Soundscan’s profession, not mine. I’m just comparing public numbers to public numbers.
Am I missing something?
Of course your iPod is full with lossless formatted music—what is that 30-40 songs on your 20GB iPod. I’m so sick of fools bringing up the lossless argument. Your average user—including power users—has no desire to have downloading a song take the same time as downloading a television show; and worse yet, have their iPod completely full with a selection of only 10 songs (seeing as most people purchase a iPod shuffle or nano). Even those people with only 50 songs in their collection would like the ability to play as many as the 50 as possible on their device; and lossless just doesn’t provide the opportunity.
And lossless, makes even less since for the music lover with large music collection. Trust me, as I’ve just spent half a day transferring 245GBs of music from a 250GB drive to a 500GB drive—all the music is mp3 or aac format; that quadrupling (if not more) my storage needs is the last thing that I want to do. I want the best compromise between sound and space possible; and AAC format offers that and MP3 is pretty great as well, at a higher bit rate.
Because obviously the iMacs don’t count. WTF! You’ve obviously never purchased a Mac.
Anyway, my take on the article, is besides all the bullshit, industry posturing, and very bad analysis—is that the sooner music industry gives up on DRM the better. This isn’t bad news for Apple; Apple tried to persuade the music industry NOT to use DRM, and when that didn’t work, worked darn hard to make the DRM as user friendly as possible.
The music industry is known for shooting itself. They want Apple to tumble so they can force a whole slew of things down consumer’s throats—and DRM is just one of those things.
My thought is MP3 format means that the industry won’t use DRM, allows you to transfer the file to whatever/whenever, has no expiration, no phoning home, and preferable has a straight forward price tag—99 cents is great (I’d even go for variable pricing if it was say 59 cents, 79 cents then 99 cents as the maximum; not the $1.59 or higher that industry wants).
So let’s have others jump to push the music industry to MP3 format; it works well for consumer benefit in the long run.
Yeah, you are missing something. The Chart is US only, iTunes Data is Worldwide.
iTunes “near CD quality” is why I will not purchase music from Apple, likewise “near DVD quality resolution” of movies and television is the same.
AllofMP3.com now sell full CD quality downloads, and guess what? It’s their biggest growth area!
I’ll keep buying CDs and ripping them until iTunes offers ‘lossless’ formats.
BTW, when I first got iTunes I ripped 1000+ CDs on my home network storage drive as ‘lossless’, and it didn’t take that long (and it didn’t damage my optical drive with ‘wear and tear’ either).
Analyst usually talk a lot of shit
Never bought online music, never will.
MDN – How much music do you buy from the iTunes store each week?
If they charged a reasonable price for downloads they wouldn’t need to bother with DRM; many of the pirates would probably see the value in paying a little for a more reliable, quality product.
“Only online music files purchased from iTunes, ripped from users’ own CDs or downloaded from pirate services can be played on the popular iPod.”
Guess I’ll just delete all of those tracks I ripped from my old LPs and cassettes, since they won’t play on my popular iPod.
MDN magic word: state, as in state of denial.
“In other words, “only” all of the recorded music in the world can be played on iPods.”
I think you all maybe missing/avoiding the point here. It seems the author is trying to say what people should have known all along: DRM has long since STOPPED being a way to combat piracy and is now simply a way for a hardware-maker (i.e. Apple, Microsoft) to force you to use their system and keep you from having any real choice. He/she doesn’t seem to be saying that iTunes doesn’t sell certain songs at all. Yahoo doesn’t have any hardware to sell, so they don’t care what player you use. That’s the main difference.
So, one of the points of what I am trying to say here is, even if Yahoo starts releasing most of its music without DRM, do you honestly think Apple will start selling their songs in iTunes without DRM? No, not at all. It wouldn’t even cross their mind. If Yahoo happens to become successful with this model, then yes, Apple may consider the option; however, it won’t be a second sooner.
re: United States of Generica
“iTunes “near CD quality” is why I will not purchase music from Apple, likewise “near DVD quality resolution” of movies and television is the same.
AllofMP3.com now sell full CD quality downloads, and guess what? It’s their biggest growth area!
I’ll keep buying CDs and ripping them until iTunes offers ‘lossless’ formats.
BTW, when I first got iTunes I ripped 1000+ CDs on my home network storage drive as ‘lossless’, and it didn’t take that long (and it didn’t damage my optical drive with ‘wear and tear’ either).”
—-
regarding your comment about ‘AllofMP3.com’.
AllofMP3.com is gonna be closed down VERY VERY soon by the Russian Government.
So if I was you I wouldnt count on getting your ‘cd quality’ downloads from there anymore.
btw – AllofMP3.com is run by the mafia, if you have given them your credit card details you are gonna be in very deep shit.
Good luck – youre gonna need it!