Apple changes it's (i)Tune

[Rich-n-Texas]

I could've sworn Apple was already offering non-CP music, but anyway, sickly Steve seems to have finally gotten the message, and now you can purchase content from the iTunes store on a tiered pricing basis. The prices range from 69 cents to $1.39 I think it is, and as well, you'll be able to play the songs on any device.

I'm about to sell my Nano because I now have a cell phone that plays MP3's, and this new (old) idea makes my decision that much sweeter. Ironical ain't it?

[Ajani]

Looks like you beat me to it:

DRM is DEAD!!!!

We gonna ride 2night, My little homie DRM died 2night...

It's about time too.... Apple has been flirting with DRM free tracks on itunes + for months but there wasn't a whole lot of content available... But now they've ditched DRM altogether... a smart and essential move, considering how many of their competitors have gone DRM free... this will help to ensure that iTunes remains no.1 for downloads...

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I could've sworn Apple was already offering non-CP music, but anyway, sickly Steve seems to have finally gotten the message, and now you can purchase content from the iTunes store on a tiered pricing basis. The prices range from 69 cents to $1.39 I think it is, and as well, you'll be able to play the songs on any device.

I'm about to sell my Nano because I now have a cell phone that plays MP3's, and this new (old) idea makes my decision that much sweeter. Ironical ain't it?

Actually Rich type person, Steve wasn't the problem(well maybe he was). He has been pushing for years for DRM free music, but the record companies have been dragging their feet. It wasn't until Apple offered the record companies a ungodly sum of money that they decided to allow their music to be lisensced DRM free. It cost them a bundle, hence why you now have a price hike for newer music($1.29). He is now screaming for DRM free movies, but he has so torn his ass in Hollywood, that they are likely going to make him wait a while. I do not think many folks in Hollywood want to give Apple the entire market, or Steve's ego will make it more difficult to live with him. Disney is sick of him after his last outburst at the last board meeting, and it is likely Sony, Warner, Paramount and Fox will hold out on him as well.

[Worf101]

I'm sure that all the major record lables have hundreds of memo's from forward thinkers who foresaw what file sharing was going to do to the then current business model. But the record company hogs would have none of it. Can you imagine what the musical landscape would look like today IF the majors had adopted a sliding scale for LEGAL music downloads some 10 years ago?

If they'd charged $1.50 for new music, 75 cents for tunes 2 to 5 years old and 50 cents for oldies and standards they'd have maybe 40% percent of the profits from a legal download biz as opposed to 100% of almost nuthin' which is what they got now. Fools, soon to be joined by newspaper publishers and Wall Street scammers. (I hope).

Da Worfster

[Rich-n-Texas]

I'd assume then that since the record co's are the driving force behind this price restucturing, we'll start seeing other providers like Amazon and the like adopt similar plans, correct? This is really going to benefit me because I don't listen to much new music, and with the money I just got from my boss for the Nano, I can buy lots and lottsa individual songs.

Another question I have is, what determines when a song is an 'oldie'? Is your pricing model an accurate one Worf, or just a hypothetical?

[noddin0ff]

Yeah, what Sir T said. Jobs wasn't dragging his feat on DRM, that was the music companies.

However, Jobs was dragging his feet on tiered pricing. The whole zen of Mac simplicity was tied up in a 'one price for everything' model. Jobs took a long time to cave on tiered pricing. It's just too un Mac like.

[Feanor]

It's great that DRM is dropped and about time.

But what about the price? What do you get for $1.39 a "song"? New or old music at 320kbps? Maybe old music should be cheaper like the Worfster suggest; maybe all music should be cheaper.

What are we paying these days for a physical CD at BestBuy or whereever? Let's take Chinese Democracy: $9.99 / 14 songs = $0.72/song plus shipping. WTF?!? How much does it cost to distribute a CD? How much does it cost to provide a download? You damned well ought to be able to download any song for $0.20, maximum, maybe less, at whatever resolution you what including lossless. At a really fair price piracy would dramatically decline and DRM would be superfluous.

[Rich-n-Texas]

One step at a time Feanor...

[JSE]

Forgive my limited iPod knowledge even though I started out with the original but....

What about the music I already have bought on iTunes? Will it now play on any devise? Or, is this just for newly purchased music?

BTW Rich, which model Nano do you have? Is it the last version (square'ish) model? I have a 60GB vidio iPod and my wife has the square Nano. I hate that Apple went back to the longer rectangular Nano.

[noddin0ff]

I read that now or in the near future iTunes Store will allow you to purchase/upgrade your existing library to DRM-free to the extent that licensing agreements with the music industry allows.

[Ajani]

I read that now or in the near future iTunes Store will allow you to purchase/upgrade your existing library to DRM-free to the extent that licensing agreements with the music industry allows.

Yep.... it's available now... I upgraded my entire collection last night....

JSE.... you have to pay about 30cents per song to upgrade your existing tracks...

I'm sure Apple will eventually switch to lossless and offer us all the ability to upgrade to lossless for oh 30 cents per song.... so we'll have paid 99c originally to purchase the song, then 30c to upgrade to DRM free 256k and finally another 30c to upgrade to lossless... That's one sweet profit margin to basically sell you 1 song 3 times....

I'm with Feanor on the pricing issue.... a major reason why CDs suffered (suffer) so heavily from pirating and then downloads is that they are overpriced in the first place.... CDs came on to the market at a premium price (well above cassettes) all those years (decades) ago... Even as CDs became ridiculously cheap to produce (how much does a blank disc cost versus an album?), the prices still remained way too high... downloads should in theory be even cheaper than CDs.. but they aren't... probably due to the fact that the physical cost of producing a CD (very low) has little impact on the overall sales price of the album...

Eventually, I suspect that sites which allow you to listen to an unlimited number of songs (for a monthly fee) will take over the market.... Let's see: $10 - $15 per month for unlimited music access versus $1.30 per song to own....

[Rich-n-Texas]

Forgive my limited iPod knowledge even though I started out with the original but....

What about the music I already have bought on iTunes? Will it now play on any devise? Or, is this just for newly purchased music?

BTW Rich, which model Nano do you have? Is it the last version (square'ish) model? I have a 60GB vidio iPod and my wife has the square Nano. I hate that Apple went back to the longer rectangular Nano.

My Nano was a 2nd gen, which is the rectangular one with curved sides. I purchased a "Faux"(sp?) leather case and armband which was useful when I went to the gym. I had no gripes with it but I just didn't like carrying around an iPod, cell phone...etc. Too much hardware.

[JSE]

Yep.... it's available now... I upgraded my entire collection last night....

JSE.... you have to pay about 30cents per song to upgrade your existing tracks...

I'm sure Apple will eventually switch to lossless and offer us all the ability to upgrade to lossless for oh 30 cents per song.... so we'll have paid 99c originally to purchase the song, then 30c to upgrade to DRM free 256k and finally another 30c to upgrade to lossless... That's one sweet profit margin to basically sell you 1 song 3 times....

I'm with Feanor on the pricing issue.... a major reason why CDs suffered (suffer) so heavily from pirating and then downloads is that they are overpriced in the first place.... CDs came on to the market at a premium price (well above cassettes) all those years (decades) ago... Even as CDs became ridiculously cheap to produce (how much does a blank disc cost versus an album?), the prices still remained way too high... downloads should in theory be even cheaper than CDs.. but they aren't... probably due to the fact that the physical cost of producing a CD (very low) has little impact on the overall sales price of the album...

Eventually, I suspect that sites which allow you to listen to an unlimited number of songs (for a monthly fee) will take over the market.... Let's see: $10 - $15 per month for unlimited music access versus $1.30 per song to own....

30 cents a song? That's steep! I'll just leave mine as is for now.

[JSE]

My Nano was a 2nd gen, which is the rectangular one with curved sides. I purchased a "Faux"(sp?) leather case and armband which was useful when I went to the gym. I had no gripes with it but I just didn't like carrying around an iPod, cell phone...etc. Too much hardware.

Dang, I was going to offer to buy yours off you if were going to get rid of it. If it were the last gen model.

[Rich-n-Texas]

I'm right now on the Amazon MP3 music store page searching for these cheap songs but so far with little success. I went to their FAQ page and clicked the link for DRM. It said all of Amazon's MP3's are DRM free. Great! So I clicked on the "Classic Rock" section then "Album Oriented Rock" and was shown albums from artists like Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd...etc, but of this sampling of three artists, the ONLY SONG I could find that was less than their normal price was "Stairway to Heaven", for 79 cents. That was it. So where're the 69 cent songs? Why can't I search on songs based on price? WTF? Maybe I'm not being patient enough? "Stairway to Heaven" is an "oldie", but so is "Us and Them" by Pink Floyd. Guess what? It costs $1.94. So whats the deal? Are stores other than the iTunes store holding out until demand at their stores decreases? And I STILL don't see any way to find out what the bitrate of these songs are without having to buy them first. 10 bucks says the cheap-to-purchase songs will have crappy old 128Kbps, and the 1 dollar + songs will be 256 or VBR. Typical corporate bullsh!t.

:shakes head in disgust:

Correction: The bit rate is shown and songs purchased for 99 cents are at 256Kbps.

[Feanor]

... downloads should in theory be even cheaper than CDs.. but they aren't... probably due to the fact that the physical cost of producing a CD (very low) has little impact on the overall sales price of the album...

For CD versus download, the cost of physical production of the disc, booklet, and jewel case isn't the most significant thing. It's the logistics that cost the money. Most of the additional cost of the physical product comes from distribution, stock handling, inventory costs, store security, sales staff, and point-of-sale handling -- these costs are totally avoided with downloading where all you need is a server and some DASD.

This is why the download price is a huge gouge. Of course, music producers firmly believe that each and every DRM-free downloaded will be distributed illegally multiple times thus they must charge more to generate the same revenue. It seems like too big a gamble to charge a much lower price and get a much higher volume of sales, and thus end up with as much or more total revenue.

Anybody heard of Bit Torrent? Yes, it's illegal but all vitually all major records can be found, most at lossless quality. I deplore illegal downloading but it happens and will continue to happen. The best way to battle this and all illegal distribution is to make legal distribution trivially cheap.

[02audionoob]

Personal opinion, but I think CD prices are mostly pretty reasonable by comparison to where the LP prices were in the last days of that format's dominance. I think I remember paying around $9 in the late 1980's. Adjusting for inflation, the cost to the consumer has come down a little.

[Kevio]

In the announcement I read, I was led to believe that the other thing changing at iTunes was increase of audio quality to 256 Kbit AAC. Stuff I downloaded from iTunes earlier on was 128 Kbit AAC and I could not abide by that or by the DRM so it's been a while since I've been there. Is 256K Kbit AAC better than what was previously available?

[filecat13]

In the announcement I read, I was led to believe that the other thing changing at iTunes was increase of audio quality to 256 Kbit AAC. Stuff I downloaded from iTunes earlier on was 128 Kbit AAC and I could not abide by that or by the DRM so it's been a while since I've been there. Is 256K Kbit AAC better than what was previously available?

Yes, it's discernibly better on good equipment, but not *twice* as good. On most MP3 players, it's difficult to tell the difference.

[Kevio]

I haven't actually auditioned it but I do assume that 256 AAC sounds better than 128 AAC. (Depending on the content, format and encoder, somewhere between 128 Kbit and 256 Kbit is where compressed audio starts to sound good to me.) What I was wondering is whether 256 AAC represents a wholesale upgrade to iTunes sound quality or have >128 Kbit downloads been available on iTunes for a while already. I'm finding it hard to believe Apple didn't see the appeal of higher bitrates earlier than this past week.