Text 4404, 80 rader
Skriven 2005-05-24 16:16:54 av Glenn Meadows (1:379/45)
   Kommentar till text 4400 av Antti Kurenniemi (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: Music players and phones
====================================
From: "Glenn Meadows" <gmeadow@comcast.net>

The real key, IMO, why Apple got there "first", is that at the time, there were
no really good portable players. Second, and probably more important, the
online sales model was an albatross, in that each label was trying to "invent"
their own store, to favor their artists to the exclusion of other label
artists.  That made any sort of purchase online a pain.  Third, the myriad of
ideas on how to license the material, was a legal nightmare actually going on.

The "beauty" of the Apple approach was that they were NOT a record label by
themselves, and all they wanted to do was sell product, like Tower, Best Buy,
etc, and approached the model from that perspective.  They knew that they had
to have all of the major labels onboard initially, and used Steve Jobs pull
with some of the top acts, to get them to help persuade the PTB that this was a
GOOD idea.

The contract from Apple is literally, 5-7 page document, it's non-negotiable,
and it's a take it or leave it deal.  We charge 99cents, you get 66, no full CD
will sell for MORE than the number of tracks times 99 cents (Classical falls
into a slightly different category because of the extra long pieces, but the
same principle applies, most full CD's sell for 9.99.)  The beauty of this
model, is it allows the customer to access all of the content at one store, and
they can pick/choose the specific tracks that they want, sort of an ala carte
menu basis.

All of the other services that have come online have basically followed that
model with just vary slight variations.

I don't know what Yahoo is doing payment wise, but unless they go back and
negotiate a lower payment rate, I'll bet that their cheap pricing is being done
as a loss leader, so they get the opportunity to push other advertisements at
the buyers.

While many of the other sites also accept advertising from the labels for
specific artists, placement on pages, etc, Apple specifically does NOT accept
any $$$ for any advertising.  All featured products are picked by the Apple
staff as "best", making a slightly more level playing field for the more
obscure artists.

One interesting offshoot of the "iPod" phenomenon, is the recent move by radio
to start formats called "Pod-casts", where listeners can submit their playlists
and such, and the station will play that playlist, which can have a wide range
of musical content.  Some of the radio programmers have been "awakened" to the
fact that their listeners actually LIKE a broad range of music, as witness
their eclectic collections on their iPods, so the iPod is actually helping open
up radio to broader playlists again.  A very unexpected consequence.

--

Glenn M.
"Antti Kurenniemi" <NOantti@SPAManttikPLEASE.com> wrote in message
news:429382f4@w3.nls.net...
>I think the profit is in the future, and the ones who are in from the early
>on will be getting the first dibs on the real money. Big companies like
>Apple can afford to build the whole market up, and after some years maybe
>there will be a lot more players, once the users have been "broken in" to
>buying online.
>
>
> Antti Kurenniemi
>
> "Mike '/m'" <mike@barkto.com> wrote in message
> news:d5v69115b29soipkkgjaqhfu9t87nndcj0@4ax.com...
>>
>> You raise a very interesting point.  Where's the profit in all this?  I
>> wonder that very same thing, especially with the lowball pricing that
>> Yahoo! has started.  Can Yahoo! sustain their service at the current
>> price?  I don't think so.
>>
>> Regarding Apple, I'm thinking that the music store is nothing more than
>> an early startup blip.  Five years from now, Apple's online media stores
>> will be very different, maybe with more of a money-making ability. ;-)
>>
>>
>> /m
>
>

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