Apple Launches Paid Music Service

Wired News ^ | 4/28/03 | Leander Kahney

[SengirV]

looks like a bunch of Mac bashing going on here before anyone does any investigating.

There is finally a service that does not require a monthly service fee, AND ALLOWS YOU TO BUY ONE SONG AT A TIME!!!!!! All the CDs that I have seen at Apple's new service are priced at $9.99, no matter how many tracks there are.

For the next 6 months or so, it will be Apple only. There is a windows version of the service planned for the end of the year.

Finally, did any of you price bashers think about the credit card fees associated with a transaction? Good luck making money on a $.50 transaction.

[IncPen]

AAC is the new standard in music compression; it's the audio part of MPEG-4 and was developed by Dolby Labs

I have an iPod, and you really have to see or try one to understand what a revolution it is. First it's a Firewire hard drive. Mine is 5 Gb.

That means I can connect it to the back of my computer with a cable (included), and it appears on the desktop. I can copy files on or off extremely quickly, or if I want to manage music I open iTunes

Then I just drag songs or song lists to the iPod or toss them in the trash. iPod manages it all. iTunes rips music CDs to mp3 or AAC for you, labels everything and catalogs it neatly

So, on the way home from work, I attach an aftermarket thingy that sends an FM signal to my car stereo and I've programmed my own ride home. The iPod runs all day on a charge or is charged via the FireWire connection. The FM stereo thing I bought came with an iPod charger for the lighter and a carrying case.

What Apple did today is what Napster should have been 5 years ago. I'll give them credit for doing it when no one else has

My understanding is that by June they'll have software and a FireWire to USB 2.0 connector to make this all PC compatible

I think it's a stunning move.

By the way, I use PCs and Macs interchangably, but generally prefer Macs.

One Apple product I'm astounded by is Final Cut Pro. It's simply the most amazing software I've ever encountered. I do the work of - I'm totally serious- 8 or 10 people with it. It is an amazing, amazing piece of software and it runs on any Mac, even my four year old laptop. I create and edit videos (full length documentaries, commercials, TV shows, concept pitches, ad campaigns, home movies, you name it)

I use my iPod as a means of creating, transporting and storing my work as well.

If you haven't been to the Apple website, go there with an open mind and see what they're doing. The jargon will take a few minutes to get a grip on, but you might find yourself liking it. Better yet if you're at the mall and they have an Apple store, go in and ask for some demos

If nothing else, it's very cool stuff

[SamAdams76]

I do like the comments about "$10 per disk" being no better than the current price. Seems to me that's $10 for 10 songs that YOU, SPECIFICALLY, want. Not 2 songs you want, and 8 more the Sony exec needs to push. I should think that would make a difference.

It would make a difference but how would you know what the good songs are unless you were able to download and listen to them first? As I said already above, many times the best songs are the ones the radio never plays. Some on this thread have mentioned "preview" but preview sucks. I can't make a determination on the worthiness of a song by listening to a 30-second clip of it.

I've been buying albums for nearly 30 years. It takes several complete listens before a song starts to "grow on me." There were many times when I first listened to an album and I thought I was ripped off. I thought it was crap. Then after the third or fourth listen, it started to grab me. Many of my favorite albums were like this. Dylan's "Blood On The Tracks" was a good example. I almost threw that tape away. Also, I used to hate classical music until I "forced" myself to listen to Beethoven's symphonies a few times. Then I was hooked. If I had to "preview" Beethoven's symphonies and Bob Dylan in 30-second bites, forget about it. I'd still be listening to Huey Lewis & The News.

[Timesink]

How many days (or hours) until the crack for the format is released on the net?

Zero. The converters have been out there forever. There's nothing sinister about AAC. It's just better than MP3.

[Nick Danger]

Better call out the Mac Heads; the haters and know-nothings are out in force on this one.

No kidding. I don't even own a Mac, but geez... some of these people have nothing to do but be negative and throw rocks. You'd think they were journalists.

[Bella_Bru]

What about golden oldies? Why should I pay .99 cents to download "On the Boardwalk"?

I've heard many people say this. They have paid for the stupid song on vinyl, then 8-track (shudder), then cassette, and do not want to fork over 17 bucks to buy it on a CD.

Can't say I disagree with you at all.

[Timesink]

$7425 to fill up that 30 gig ipod. . .

Might be true if the new iPods only accepted the new iTunes Music Store files. But they accept all the MP3s they used to. Cost to fill: $0, if you're so inclined.

[SamAdams76]

Finally, did any of you price bashers think about the credit card fees associated with a transaction? Good luck making money on a $.50 transaction.

That can be gotten around easily by having a minimum number of downloads in a particular session. Most people aren't going to want to stop at one song anyhow as evidenced already by people on this thread who have already used the service. They have to pull themselves back from downloading too much. It appears that the average "session" will result in multiple downloads. At a more reasonable price point, many more tracks will be downloaded and more recording artists will benefit.

[Hank Rearden]

Gee, perhaps they desperately need a gimmick like this music whatnot.

Perhaps color and kickiness like My First Computer and Barbie's Tangerine 'Pooter just don't fly off the shelves.

Three percent and falling. Let's see how long it takes the service to be hacked. By Windows users.

[Billy_bob_bob]

I'd use a PC but I'm not a masochist.

[grapeape]

What on earth are you people talking about?
99 cents is still not free. The music sounds good enough to the average consumer that they will not care. It is still to easy to file swap. This will bomb!!

Jobs and Mac are still trying to be too cute. They will fail.

I like downloading music off of the internet because of my upbringing. I put on a red army cap and down load away!!! I think that it is such a beautiful irony that the very people who tried to program me into being an “American hating lover of Lenin” would complain so loudly about someone getting something for free from them. It is just too funny. I even download songs and movies I really don’t want. Sick I know. I just imagine those sexually-challenged Hollywood fools, whining endlessly at the thought of me getting their stuff for free!!

The only way file sharing will ever be stopped is if congress finds out that file-sharing is the most efficient way of downloading child-porn. If you don’t believe me try typing in some obvious words into your downloading program and watch the thousands of videos come up.

If you ever wanted to see Tom Delay drop “The Hammer” tell him about this one.

[Mr. Thorne]

I'd not use punctuation, but...

Ah, well, there's bound to be one of him on any platform-related thread, eh?

[Timesink]

.99 cents a track seems a rip. Even if you loved every track, you know and I know that there are artists who have some very short tracks -- say 20 tracks. At .99 cents a track, its cheaper to buy the $15.00 CD.

Except that what most people have been complaining about for so long (including on FR, until this specific thread, unsurprisingly) is that they're tired of paying $15 (or $18 or $19) for an entire CD when they only want one or two songs in the first place. Now they can get just those one or two songs; can get them in a format with far-superior audio quality; can sample all the other songs from the album in the exact same quality to see if they do like them (no more 20k AM radio-quality samples from Amazon, and then only for 1/4 of the songs from the album); free album cover art; exclusive songs unavailable elsewhere in any format whatsoever; free broadband videos; etc.

Is iTunes Music Service going to kill Kazaa and Gnutella tomorrow? No, of course not. But for a certain segment of the population (which, again, seemed to include a large contingent of Freepers who would regularly screech about the illegality of any free file trading ... until APPLE came up with a solution instead of MICROSOFT) interested in legality, higher quality files, convenience (how often do we have to keep logging into a P2P service over and over and over waiting for someone with that one slightly-obscure song we're looking for to actually to be connected to the network?) ... this is going to get their attention?

And don't overlook the business concept of First Mover Advantage. This is the only legal, for-sale online music service that's doing it right, technologically speaking. So as the record labels open up and start allowing for varied pricing, more players accept AAC files, etc, Apple will be way out in front.

[Timesink]

That is a very real and very large concern. I think that's the killer, more than the cost per song.

The entire world will know whether iTunes 4 includes any such spyware by, oh, 72 hours from now at the max. It's not as easy to bury secret spyware in the MacOS like it is in Windows, and Windows geeks can spread the word within a day or so when some new privacy-violating program hits the streets.

[Timesink]

If I had $0.99 for every time someone said Apple was dying, Apple was a goner, or Apple had blown it, I'd be rich.

They've been bloviating about Apple's "imminent demise" since 1981. It's so pathetic.

[KateUTWS]

"Windows availability is coming. For once, just once, you have to wait a few months instead of us."
I can hardly wait!

[Mr. Thorne]

So don't.

Every time music files get discussed, this comes up.

Folks, it's easy.

Even my (gasp) Mac can do it. Just run an audio cable from the turntable/8-track/cassette player into your sound-in port. I have a handy little $50 sound editor program called SoundMaker from Micromat that records sound files, and allows you to clean up your sound files. It's fairly old (5 years) so it doesn't save to mp3, but it does save to aiff, and there's your song, all ready to be added to your playlist for iTunes, iPod, or whatever the player programs are for wintel. And, as I said, you can do cleanup, getting rid of any 'noise' in the song, if you so desire.

Of course that takes time, and it's up to each of us to determine the time/money/conscience ratio.

[Mr. Thorne]

Sounds like the public library is the place to be, then.

Borrow the CD, play it 'till you know what you like, take it back, buy the tracks. Or, if you like the whole disk, buy the whole disk.

[SamAdams76]

Well the public library might be a great place to preview music - if you are into Lawrence Welk and the Andrew Sisters.

[Mr. Thorne]

Either that or ask friends to loan you CDs.

That'd be the only ways I can think of, at this hour of the night, to manage free, legal, previewing.