iTunes Plus Gets An F Minus

[rocktivity]

(c) 10/18/07 by rocknation

Welcome back to the real world, Apple.

On the heels of dropping their iPhone price by one third...Apple has decided to suspend their iTunes Plus service. They charged about one third more for recordings without digital rights management (DRM) encoding, which prevents the making of additional copies...Not surprisingly, a market for DRM de-encoding software quickly sprang up.

...Now they brag of having "lowered the price for iTunes Plus songs to 99 cents“ and having "expanded our selection to more than two million songs…(w)ith high-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding and no DRM…(which)…means you can play iTunes Plus music on any iPod or other digital music player and an unlimited number of computers”...Apparently, some people have to learn EVERYTHING the hard way.

:headbang:
rocknation

[madeline_con]

1. Well, when ya think you're all that, it's a hard lesson.

and Hello! have they never heard of file sharing?

[Rhythm and Blue]

2. So...they adapt to market pressures? That's F-minus?

Better than what most in the music industry do. And it's still a good deal, especially for 256-kbps. 128 hurts your brain after a while.

[Deja Q]

3. I agree.

Some stores do not alter their practices.

256k was a nice upgrade; though I've yet to redownload anything...

[rocktivity]

4. Your point is well taken

Though common sense should have dictated that it was a bad idea out of the box. And especially since it's also better than what most in the Bush administration would do!

:evilgrin:
rocknation

[alfredo]

11. There's another interested party in this: the record companies. He may

have had to do that at first to get the record companies on board. I think he knew from day one that the higher price wouldn't fly, but he had to throw them a bone.

So far he has played it well, with only a few missteps.

One tends to forget he is one of the more powerful men in Hollywood. The ones who have been paying attention knew back in the mid 90's that he was turning his attention to content delivery. And that also explains why Gates wanted him to kill QuickTime (the baby).

[rocktivity]

13. Another point well taken.

Maybe Apple did had to "prove" that the labels were wrong about higher pricing. But unlike Bush, I'm willing to acknowledge that my argument may have holes!

:headbang:
rocknation

[alfredo]

14. If you didn't want to explore this subject you wouldn't have

posted.

One reason I like Apple is how they play the game. They are interesting to watch. They have gone from a company that was being written off as road kill, to a market leader (rule maker) with a market cap twice that of Dell.

BTW, I think their Apple TV will slowly fade away. It's just not selling well enough.

[onehandle]

5. It was all DRM in the beginning. Why not rag on their competitors too?

I'll tell you why. Because Apple is #1 and will stay that way.

If it wasn't for Apple's iPod and a persistent Steve Jobs, legal digital music downloads would not be as available as it is today.

Jealous?

[rocktivity]

7. Not jealous, just vindicated.

I saw it as a bad idea right out of the gate, and I don't have a MBA. Why didn't they?

:headbang:
rocknation

[onehandle]

9. I'm sure the RIAA had nooooothing to do with their original business model.

If they had their way, user recording wouldn't exist in any form.

Yawn.

[toddaa]

8. eMusic has never had DRM

So what if they don't have the latest Britney Spears release. Some of us like actual music.

[onehandle]

10. Leave her alone you bastards!

You're lucky she even performed for you!

[mondo joe]

6. I don't see how it's an F minus.

They tried something, making DRM free music available. That's a good thing.

The they lowered the price. Also a good thing.

This is why Apple has such high brand loyalty.

[Zorro]

12. And they're going to get an A+ for the upcoming Leopard release

Looks like there are some very nice baseline capabilities in this OS version.

Eat your heart out, Microsoft.

[demobabe]

15. who cares about DRM anyway?

You can use iTunes to export and reimport your music and get rid of the DRM. No big deal.

[alarimer]

16. So now none of the songs are DRM-free? Or are all of them?

Is there anyway to tell the difference? I mean I have an Ipod but I use Emusic for most downloads.

[Rhythm and Blue]

17. Most are, some aren't. They're marked iTunes Plus if they are.

The real advantage isn't the lack of DRM, it's the higher bitrate, IMO.

[alarimer]

18. okay. Yes there are ways around that DRM

Burning it to a CD for one.

It is annoying to have songs at different bitrates on my player at the same time. Some songs are loud, some are not. I guess I should have paid more attention when I was putting them on my computer. Now it's too late because some of the cd's were stolen. Oh well.

[Rhythm and Blue]

19. Bitrates shouldn't affect volume that much.

The bitrate is the quality of encoding, not the volume. It's how much of the information off the CD is stored, and how much is just forgotten in the name of smaller file sizes. Higher bitrates sound better--but you probably won't notice the difference unless you've got a nice pair of audiophile headphones or a good desktop speaker set.

If volume is giving you problems, you can adjust base volume for individual songs or for albums. Many CDs are recorded at different volumes, irritatingly enough. Seems the record industry realized that they can make up for cheap recording techniques by cranking the volume uniformly and hoping you don't notice. To correct this, just select the songs you want to fix, hit command-I (or ctrl-I on a PC) to Get Info, and then adjust the volume slider one way or the other. Or, you can set it to automatically level sound volume under the Preferences.

[alarimer]

20. Thanks.

I realized that the CDs that are quieter are older ones, like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska