01.16.08 - 11:35am
Four years ago iTunes was just a fledgling set to rise to unparalleled heights. At the time the Super Bowl was a huge booster for iTunes which combined with Pepsi launched a commercial set to Greenbay’s version of the song “I Fought the Law” encouraging buyers to buy legally online from iTunes rather than illegally downloading tunes from various sources.
Over 1,000,000 songs from iTunes were given away free in the Pepsi promotion and iTunes has then grown expeditiously year after year, becoming the extreme dominant in the download market and helping to propel iPods to explicit dominion.
Today however, a new era is emerging and rather than Apple being the underdog to Microsoft, with an almost cult like following, Apple is now the one on top and as the new “King of the Hill” is the one everyone wants to overcome.
Category: MP3 Players, apple, itunes | Tags: amazon, apple, drm, itunes, justin-timberlake, pepsi | Be the First to Comment »
01.11.08 - 03:03pm
Amazon has added Sony BMG to their already large repertoire of DRM free music as BMG joins Universal, Warner and EMI, selling their songs DRM free from the Amazon website. This puts Amazon’s DRM free catalog at an impressive 3.1 million songs.
The addition of BMG’s music on Amazon puts a larger dent in the Apple/iTunes dominace over the market as Apple still has yet to sell any of its music DRM free except that from EMI. All the other music on iTunes can only be played on an iPod and have limited download use due to the Fairplay restrictions on the music.
“We are constantly exploring new ways of making our music available to consumers in the physical space, over the Internet and through mobile phones, and this initiative is the newest element of our ongoing campaign to bring our music to fans wherever they happen to be,” said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business and U.S. sales for Sony BMG, in a statement.
Category: itunes | Tags: amazon, apple, drm, itunes, sony-BMG | Be the First to Comment »
08.06.07 - 04:59pm
The question of whether no DRM is working seems to be being answered and not favorably for the American music consumer.
EMI who was the first to go DRM free has just posted a massive drop in CD sales losing 19.8 percent in the last three months. The loss is being blamed on illegal downloads.
Total revenue for EMI has declined by 5.1 percent, even with a 26 percent increase in digital sales.
The drop reflects “the tough market conditions experienced in the recorded music market,” EMI said in a statement.
EMI was the first major music label to sign a contract with iTunes offering all their music DRM free on the site.
They have since been struggling more than the rest of the music labels. Most noticeably have been their extremely low CD sales in America.
EMI was taken over last week by a private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners for 2.4 billion.
Category: itunes | Tags: apple, drm, emi, free_music, itunes, music_labels, pirated-music | Be the First to Comment »
06.27.07 - 01:29pm
Just a short while ago the blogging world went a gaga over iTunes embedding personal information including e-mail addresses in any DRM free songs that went out (they were there previously they were however encrypted with the DRM encryption).
Now there has is a new software called Privatunes which you can get on the Privatunes website. It is developed by Ratiatum, a French website, and will erase your private information from the iTunes files.
The Privatunes software is free! At the moment it is only available for Microsoft users and will allow buyers to erase their name and e-mail addresses from their iTunes software as well as back up the original file.
Currently only one file can be addressed at at time but Ratiatum is promising that soon an updated version will allow for multiple files to be addressed collectively. The service is also going to be made compatible with Mac or Linux.
Category: itunes | Tags: drm, encrypted, e_mail_addresses, itunes, privatunes, ratiatum | Be the First to Comment »
06.18.07 - 05:58pm
Paul McCartney will soon be seen dancing away on your TV singing and strumming the guitar to his hit single “Dance Tonight” in a TV ad spot for iTunes. McCartney began selling his solo albums on iTunes in May.
His digital move is being followed by ex-Beatles co-mate Ringo Starr who has just signed a deal with EMI releasing his Capitol/EMI catalog for digital web download.
Ringo Starr’s 1970 album Beacoups of Blues, his 1973 album Ringo, and his album Photograph: The Very Best of Ringo Starr will be available on August 28th.
EMI signed a landmark deal with Apple to release their music DRM free on iTunes back in April so now Ringo Starr will be there and Paul McCartney’s solo albums are already there but still the original Beatles albums have yet to arrive.
Category: itunes | Tags: beatles_albums, dance_tonight, drm, emi_catalog, itunes, paul_mccartney, ringo_starr, tv_ad | Be the First to Comment »
04.27.07 - 02:50pm
The “talks” with the big four are coming up and while Apple is putting the pressure on the record labels to implement DRM free music, they in return are putting the pressure on Apple to implement a subscription service.
A subscription service will give the record labels a residual income that they hope will make up for the loss of revenue they are currently suffering from.
Jobs however, is saying no at least at the moment. In an interview with Reuters he was quite frank in saying “customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” and that “the subscription model has failed so far.â€
Jobs however did add “Never say never.” After all while subscription services for the moment have not been so remarkable, on the iPod where you could download a 1000 songs, play them until your tired of them and then download a 1000 new ones for around $10 a month vs a $1000… - well it can definitely have its monetary advantages.
Category: itunes | Tags: drm, itunes, music-downloads, subscription-service | Be the First to Comment »
04.20.07 - 12:33pm
CD sales lost over 13 percent of their revenue in 2006, and digital music sales jumped 60 percent, with album sales up 103
percent. This puts record companies in a bit of a rock and a hard place in upcoming negotiations with Apple over music contracts coming up this next month. With such an exorbitant loss of music sales, record companies need to find a way to make money selling the music digitally. With Apple controlling over 80% of a market that the record labels desperately need, the record labels may forced to play into Apple’s hands when the contracts hit the tables
Apple clearly will be fighting for DRM free music and since EMI has already signed up to have all their music DRM free the record labels hands have already been called, without even getting a chance to fight for Apple’s Fairplay to be opened up with DRM still in place.
Category: apple, itunes | Tags: apple, cd_sales, drm, emi, music_contracts, record_labels | Be the First to Comment »
04.02.07 - 12:44pm
Steve Jobs is staying true to his word in an open letter he issued saying he wanted to abolish DRM’s. In a landmark deal with EMI Group, the fourth largest record label in the world, it has been announced that all songs would have the DRMs removed beginning in May.
“EMI, which has historically been one of the more experimentation-friendly major labels, realized that that’s the future,” said
Aram Sinnreich, a senior analyst with Radar Research.
The songs will cost slightly more at $129 instead of $0.99 but this is not supposed to be because of the removal of the DRMs but instead due to higher sound quality being featured in the songs.
“We think our customers are going to love this,” Jobs said. He also expects that with the pressure being put on other record labels, more than half of iTunes songs will be DRM free by the end of the year.
Category: itunes | Tags: drm, emi_group, landmark_deal, steve_jobs | Be the First to Comment »
02.06.07 - 05:25pm
“If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music,” wrote Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs has written a essay, and posted it on the Apple website, concerning the issue of iTunes, and the DRM’s which prevent Apple’s iTunes music from being played on anything other than the iPod. In this essay Steve Jobs challenges the music industry to let their songs be sold DRM free.
This seems to be in direct contradiction to early statements made by Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. Nuemayr spoke on the escalating European discontent with iTunes incompatibility in which he said ‘’Apple hopes that European governments will encourage a competitive environment that lets innovation thrive, protects intellectual property and allows consumers to decide which products are successful.”
Category: itunes | Tags: drm, iPod, itunes, steve_jobs | Be the First to Comment »
01.26.07 - 10:16am
Apple has been fighting battles in Europe over iTune’s incompatibility with music players other than the iPod for months now, and forthwith they must fight the Netherlands too.
“What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod,” said Van Kouwen, a spokesman for the Dutch Consumertenbond. “When you buy a music CD it doesn’t play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn’t be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives.”
This new complaint from the Netherlands follows Norway’s demand on Monday that Apple must open iTunes to other music devices by the end of September or be taken to court.
The ombudsman from Norway, Bjoern Erik Thon said “”iTunes is imposing unreasonable and unbalanced restrictions that are not in accordance with Norwegian law.”
Category: itunes | Tags: drm, itunes, netherlands | Be the First to Comment »
