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Apples Music Store?

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funnyperson1

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2001
I was watching TechTV today and apprently Apple has started an online music store sponsored by 5 of the major record labels selling songs for 1$ a song. You will be allowed to Burn these songs onto cds and arrange playlists. It is not subcription based, and songs stay on your hdd as you want it to.

The reason I asked about this is because I know a lot of people here like the idea of selling songs for one song per dollar.

So what do you think?

Personally I like it and I think its a better solution to music piracy than suing every person who shares music. Unfortunately it wont be out for windows for a while, but when it does come out, ill definately check it out.
 
I think it is a step in the right direction.
But I think $1.00 a song for all songs is too high.
If you can buy a CD from the bargain rack for $5.00 to $6.00, (maybe even less) with 10 or 12 songs on it, that works out to well under a $1.00 a song. And that is for a CD that had to be burned, packaged, and transported. They have none of that overhead here.

I can see that high of a price for whatever the latest and most popular is, but if I want to get a bunch of old Talking Heads tracks, I would still be better off going to the local used CD store, and then burning the MP3's myself.
How much money does the RIAA or the artist receive from the sales of used CD's? Answer, zero.
Even if it were .25 cents a song for some of the oldies, they would receive some.

It should be a sliding scale, with $1.00 being the maximum.
 
Well, you can buy most albums for $9.99 so that's a good deal right there. I've used the store, I've bought an album and it was really painless. I've shared my iTunes library with my laptop hooked up to my home stereo and it's been nice. I did have to "authorize" my laptop to play my songs I had purchased, which is exactly what I should have done. Once authenticated, any songs I purchase can be played on my laptop.

I think this will be a snowball sort of deal. I feel it will work, and work well, but they need more artists. Once they have more artists then more people will download music. Once they get the Windows version of iTunes out (and they are hiring windows programmers, check monster.com) then it will be even more successful.

oh, and Apple only makes about 30¢/song with the music companies making the rest. So $1/song isn't a lot of profit for Apple, as they have to pay for bandwidth, etc.
 
I think its a pretty good idea, and it will work. But... I see one problem. I do not feel I should pay $1 for a MP3. The amount of a dollar a song is fine, but I do not feel it should be for a MP3. Some of you are probably thinking I've lost it, but hear me out first. An MP3 is not a Lossless compression, they are not exact duplicates of the songs. I will not purchase music from a vendor (i.e. apple) unless what I get is an exact copy. Some of you are probably saying "it doesn't matter, you can't tell the difference". Well.. personally I think I can tell, especially when I burn it to a CD. Maybe its just me, and maybe the MP3 format really only removes the stuff "we can't hear" but untill I have 100% faith in this, I would not spend money on it even though $1 is not much in the big picture. IF apple came out with a lossless compression I would be all over this in a second.

my .02
 
i agree i think its a step in the right direction


however they need to make there service better than lets say kazaa

by that i mean kazaa is free so you have to offer something more worth there money like faster downloads or grater varity or better sound encodeing stuff like that
 
I agree this is a good idea but instead of a pay per song service, i think a subscription service would be better, and there should be obvious benefits for paying for a service that's otherwise provided free by other programs (Kazaa, winmx, etc.)
 
illwillchill said:
I agree this is a good idea but instead of a pay per song service, i think a subscription service would be better, and there should be obvious benefits for paying for a service that's otherwise provided free by other programs (Kazaa, winmx, etc.)

I doubt there would be a subscription service. People would start acting like they were using a P2P program; they would d/l everything they had the slightest intrest in, and apple would loose losts of money. Also you could give your login to your friend and they would not have to pay for it. To many problems with subscriptions. Remember when AOL went to a one time monthly fee, people never logged off and if I remember right AOL too a hit for a while.
 
First of all, it's not an mp3, it's an AAC-encoded song. The sound difference is pretty significan between the two IMO.

Second off, a subscription service is a different concept altogether. I don't ever have to buy another song again if I don't want to with Apple's service.

Third, speed. I bought a cd that contained 12 tracks. On my 1.8mbps cable line I downloaded the entire album in roughly 1-2 minutes. I was downloading at over 200KBps the entire time. Try that with Kazaa.

It comes down to value. To me, 1-2 minutes of my time + $10 is worth not having to spend hours downloading off Kazaa hoping to find good quality versions of songs.
 
songs I encode with iTunes have an .m4a extension. Songs I download have an .m4p extension. .m4p is protected AAC audio, .m4a is Apple's extension for home-brewed AAC audio.

Here's a link on Apple's site regarding AAC Audio/Mpeg-4 Audio

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/
 
Okay, let me get this strait. Apple is getting blown away by everything Intel and AMD is offering on every benchmark and is watching some of its core developers stray towards the windows platform. So, to save the companies core business, the sale of apple computers, it launches a service that is totally non-related to its core platform, more than a service, an initiative and commiting tons of resources to do this. Good move.

This is EXACTLY how big coorporations run themselves into the ground. They get excess cash(which Apple has) and spend it on something that doesn't add value to the company and isn't in the same industry as the company. Peter Lynch called it diworsification, and it was one of largest "bail" signs.
 
I think this is the type of thing everyone would want to say, "Yes, great idea. Step in the right direction. Good intentions, etc." However, thats not always how it works. Sure, i see the intention of this idea is to benefit both the artist and the buyer. However, once you give the cat cookies, its gonna want milk (or something, i dunno). If anything, the Kazaa user's gonna want free movies in addition to free music - not the other way around. Its good hearted, etc - but the world doesnt work that way.

I will NEVER by a song off some website. If anything, i'd buy the CD (which i would only by in the rare cases where i like ALL of the songs on it and for some strange reason feeling generous that day) - but i would never by an mp3 or an aac or anything of that sort.

The music industry can try all they want to make people to buy cds/songs, but once you've gone kazaa you'll never go back. I cant imagine paying for music.

Arguements against what i've said: plenty. Arguements for what i've said: not too much. But there really cant be an arguement. I agree with all the points against Kazaa, but i would never actually follow them. Its that simple - sure, im stealing money, its piracy, the musicians suffer (not really), etc. I understand. But that wont make me start buying cds/songs.
 
I used kazaa and I went back so what does that mean then?
metra said:
I think this is the type of thing everyone would want to say, "Yes, great idea. Step in the right direction. Good intentions, etc." However, thats not always how it works. Sure, i see the intention of this idea is to benefit both the artist and the buyer. However, once you give the cat cookies, its gonna want milk (or something, i dunno). If anything, the Kazaa user's gonna want free movies in addition to free music - not the other way around. Its good hearted, etc - but the world doesnt work that way.

I will NEVER by a song off some website. If anything, i'd buy the CD (which i would only by in the rare cases where i like ALL of the songs on it and for some strange reason feeling generous that day) - but i would never by an mp3 or an aac or anything of that sort.

The music industry can try all they want to make people to buy cds/songs, but once you've gone kazaa you'll never go back. I cant imagine paying for music.

Arguements against what i've said: plenty. Arguements for what i've said: not too much. But there really cant be an arguement. I agree with all the points against Kazaa, but i would never actually follow them. Its that simple - sure, im stealing money, its piracy, the musicians suffer (not really), etc. I understand. But that wont make me start buying cds/songs.
 
Couple known good quality, guarantee of a good connection, and a complete download, and contrast with an increasingly hostile and litigious music industry pressure group, with Washington in its pocket, and unknown and often junk files, and the increasing possibility of harmful viruses in the download.

The future looks bright for this music service.

The future for P2P looks bleak.
It probably won't disappear, but it will probably eventually have to go underground.

I'll miss it, but all good things come to an end.
 
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Apple knows it's getting its *** handed to it benchmark wise. There's nothing they can do until there's an alternative to the G4. Motorola violated the terms of their contract with regards to cpu manufacturing and Apple is suing them over it. The PPC970, which should arrive this summer or later this year, hopefully will even itself out performance wise with Intel/AMD's offerings.

I'm not blaming motorola or IBM or whatever, it's Apple's computers that are slow, it's their fault entirely. They know this. They're trying to focus attention away from that by integrating cool software and products and by making their laptops the best they can.

William said:
Okay, let me get this strait. Apple is getting blown away by everything Intel and AMD is offering on every benchmark and is watching some of its core developers stray towards the windows platform. So, to save the companies core business, the sale of apple computers, it launches a service that is totally non-related to its core platform, more than a service, an initiative and commiting tons of resources to do this. Good move.

This is EXACTLY how big coorporations run themselves into the ground. They get excess cash(which Apple has) and spend it on something that doesn't add value to the company and isn't in the same industry as the company. Peter Lynch called it diworsification, and it was one of largest "bail" signs.
 
nealric said:
I have been hearing that the service is mac user only
Was I misinformed?

No you haven't been mis-informed. Apple is currently hiring Windows programmers for a port. Steve said by the end of the year there will be a Windows version.
 
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