Posted on 06/08/2011 2:37:05 PM PDT by mgstarr
Apple's new iOS 5 software for iPhones, shipping this fall, has many additions, but appears to have one notable subtraction: The music app is no longer called "iPod" — it's just called "Music." There's a separate app for "Video," as on the iPad and iPod touch.
Apple is probably mostly trying to unify the experience across all of its iOS devices, so playing music and videos is the same on all of them. Simpler, less confusing. It makes sense.
But it's hard to overlook that Apple is also probably starting the inevitable wind-down of the iPod brand. Since launching almost 10 years ago, the iPod was Apple's most important product for years, driving huge growth at the company and making the iPhone and iPad possible.
But thanks to smarter mobile phones like Apple's own iPhone, listening to music is now mainly a function of your phone, not a separate device like the iPod.
And that's why iPod sales fell 14% year-over-year last quarter, while iPhone sales more than doubled year-over-year. The iPod business is declining, and while it will obviously stick around for many years, it's probably going to go away eventually.
(A first step could be retiring the iPod classic — the scroll-wheel device that has been on the iPhone's "iPod" app logo since the beginning — this fall, near its 10th anniversary. That's another good reason to tweak the way the iPhone app works and looks.)
Apple Starts to Wind Down the "iPod" BrandAgain, we don't expect the iconic iPod brand to go away any time soon. The iPod touch continues to grow, although Apple could conceivably rename that if it wanted. But other iPods still serve a purpose, and will likely stick around for many years.
But the wheels are in motion. Apple's most important product, the iPhone, won't have the word "iPod" on it anymore. And that's kind of a big deal.
You bought music with DRM, and it’s still DRM. What a concept!
Download? Yes. Load it into the music library of an iDevice or onto iCloud? No.
Hints are that the iPod Nano 7 will have a camera. They’ll remove the clip to do it, and otherwise use the current form.
Sure looks that way, doesn't it? All it cost Apple is $150 million and 70% of the take. I suspect that Apple's pitch to the record labels went along the lines of "something is better than nothing, and a couple hundred million dollars is a lot of something."
I think iTunes in the Cloud will have huge numbers for its first year. $25 is a small price to pay to get a quality upgrade on thousands of tracks, even if you just have them on one computer and one iPod and won't get much out of the cloud functions. Even for the tracks that I ripped from CD at 128K about a decade ago, when I didn't know better and hard drive space was scarce, $25 is a bargain compared to the hassle of re-ripping discs, deleting the old ones, and then having to rebuild my playlists.
There will likely be a drop-off after that, as the dedicated music pirates launder and re-download their tracks and have no further need for it. But I think there will be enough users to make it an ongoing profit center for both Apple and the labels. If Apple just breaks even, it differentiates iDevices and the iTunes store in a useful way.
So, the idea is that you pay Apple $24.95 a year, they scan your old music collection, upgrade all your pirated/ripped tracks, and give you back legitimate music.
Under the strict letter of the law, I suspect your upgraded pirated tracks are still not entirely legit. But there would be no way to prove it.
Only part of iCloud is currently live -- the part that lets you download previously purchased tracks. Music Match, the $25/yr. service that launders CD rips and such, is not yet available. I suspect that iTunes purchased tracks will get an upgrade for paid subscribers.
RE: While I have my songs loaded on there, I still use my tiny iPod Nano for listening to music.
Same. I have about 30 songs on my iPhone but still keep my 5,000 songs on my iPod photo which is pretty old, but completely functional.
I have two iPod Classics and they are loaded with identical music/video for the kids. They are especially useful when in a car like my husband’s or my mother’s where there is no dvd player.
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