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Warner says cutting off iTunes maybe necessary

updated 02:55 pm EDT, Wed September 28, 2005

Warner may cut off iTunes

Warner's digital strategy chief says that labels might have no other choice than to cut off Apple's digital music sales, leaving the iTunes Music Store without many of its popular tracks. "What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then? The industry can say, OK we'll cut him off - very few people people buy music from digital downloads," said Nash, according to the report from The Register. Digital downloads form a fraction of the music market, and Apple only makes four cents from every 99 cent download, but the company has been using the iTunes Music Store to supplement its wildly popular iPod music player. Earlier this month, Jobs based on their desire to raise prices on some music and said the move would be detrimental to the industry by pushing consumers back piracy. [corrected]

by MacNN Staff

(24)

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industry, digital music/video

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Paul Huang
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Sep 1999

0

09/28, 03:32pm | report spam | close Reply |
CD rental

There is always CD rental. Uh um...CD stores with liberal return policy.

Copyright on music is always going to be like the speed law--most people look at it like a recommendation; you are not guilty until you are caught.

telem
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Dec 1999

0

09/28, 03:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
Life Is All Negotiation

You negotiate with your wife, you negotaite with your boss, you negotiate when you buy a car, Warner says this, Apple says that, it's just part of negotiating.

unity@mac.com
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2005

0

09/28, 03:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Really...

I really doubt they would cut them off just because "very few people people buy music from digital downloads...". Its a source of revenue for the labels, one that is popular. If they labels cut off iTunes it would look bad for the labels, not Apple. "Gee, we cut them off because we wanted to raise prices and Apple did not want to play."

And if legal downloads are such a small part of of the industry then why are the labels so concerned with piracy? I though legal downloads made up a rather large part of all digital music downloads.

If so then saying that legal downloads are such a small part I dont see why they would be concerned with piracy then... bigots.

typoon
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Oct 1999

0

09/28, 04:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Why?

UGH! I hate these record execs. The are trying to sue everyone under the sun for illegal downloads now that iTunes had made it hip and cool to do legal downloads the want to either cut it off or raise the price. Both of which WILL bring many people back to pirating music. Why are these Music Execs so foolish and shortsighted? It drives me nuts.

That's like saying we've been charging you 99 cents for this product for a while now and because for no other apparent reason except that they want more money we are going to make some crazy prcing scheme and try to milk our customers for more money. I wish I could get a pay raise the same way the record companies do.

legacyb4
Mac Elite

Joined: May 2001

0

09/28, 04:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
Because

They want more money, plain and simple.

However, all the iPods sold will only drive users to find alternative ways to fill those huge storage capacities.

I can definitely see a boost in the subscription-based services as tech-savvy folks say 'fine, s**** it then. i'll subscribe to those services and find ways to make sure that i can KEEP the music i have downloaded'... idiots!

SpeedRacer
Senior User

Joined: Jul 2000

0

09/28, 04:10pm | report spam | close Reply |
Record Exec Aholes

...must really hurt considering how far up there they put their own heads. "We don't want another MTV"? Who else contributed as much to increased pop-c***-music sales over the past 20 years than MTV? Why not just say what they really mean...

"We want total control over price, distribution, profit, artists, consumers, communication, and hey, innovation-of-an-kind? Could you please bend over so we can stick it to you too?"

I hope they're running Windoze so some PO'd elementary schooler with 100,000 pirated songs can someday write a virus that will F's their $3/song rent-an-artist model as badly as their F-ing with creative license and modern copyright precedent.

schmiddi
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Joined: Apr 2002

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09/28, 04:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
back to using limewire

those guys just don't get it. In the end I just feel bad for the artists (well at least those people who are artists and not just some produces c***). If Warner doesn't want my money then that is their right, but don't blame me when I stop buying your CDs. There is a lot of other music out there.

jarcoal
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Joined: Jun 2005

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09/28, 04:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
pirating

i think that the argument "if they raise the prices on the itunes store, people will go back to pirating" is a flawed one because i'm fairly sure the large portion of people that download from itunes, were the ones purchasing albums before it existed. if itunes went under, they would probably be quicker to go back to the music stores than to kazaa. especially with how awful these pirating networks have become.

cooner
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Joined: Sep 2003

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09/28, 04:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: pirating

Actually, I know quite a few people who've mostly gotten away from P2P downloads and use iTMS since it's come out instead. Their main reasons: (1) honesty, ethics, etc. and (2) easier to find what you're looking for and know it's the right track at good quality.

Not a scientific survey, of course, but from my experience I'd say, yeah, there's a lot of people who are going to P2P no matter what as long as it's available, but I think there are a significant number of folks who WANT to do the right thing, if it's made available in an simple and affordable way. iTMS mostly does that.

lsrdsc
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2004

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09/28, 04:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
name me...

Name me 5 songs that people would want to pay more than 99 cents for...

climacs
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2001

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09/28, 04:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
shorter music biz exec:

"We're perfectly willing to cut off our noses to spite our face! I mean it! We'll really do it!"

or

"Empty threats as a negotiation tactic - I know it ain't much but it's all I got."

So, what would they do instead of iTunes? iTunes exists in part because music biz execs couldn't get their online act together.

And no, Jobs is not going to give away music for 39 cents or 29 cents a tune.

This Warner guy is just blowing smoke... out his a**. "Negotiation" as said above.

zl9600
Forum Regular

Joined: Oct 2003

0

09/28, 05:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
cooner is right

i agree with cooner. i was a huge limewire user until itms. now, i only use it when i can't find it on tms. for the exact reasons cooner states.

that argument is not flawed. i will NOT be going back to a music store. i'll be using satellite radio and streaming radio and just forget about carrying the ipod around everywhere.

Ben Lawson
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Joined: Jul 2002

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09/28, 05:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
Labels are Evil

How can the (big) labels honestly complain about iTunes pricing? They make more from a download than they do from a physical sale. Apple is making only a few cents per song, almost all of it goes straight to the label.

Hot new artists and songs get their revenue from high sales, not extortionate pricing. And I don't Apple isn't forbidding the labels from lowering the price of back catalog to drive sales.

The real problem is that their product is generally crappy and if consumers are given the choice they will only choose the one or two songs they like from an album and leave the filler on the shelf. The labels depend on forcing full album sales to maintain their profits.

The record labels are proving that they are more interested in extracting money from consumers that they are in providing fair value. When I buy a CD these days I try not to think about who gets the money. It just gives me heartburn.

Jwink3101
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2005

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09/28, 05:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Fine By Me

let the record compaies drop iTMS for all i care. I will just pirate what i can't find on iTMS. I am not above piratinfg my music but i prefer to o it the legal way. I am above buying a whole CD for one song or buying a really expensive CD.

dona83
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Joined: Jun 2005

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09/28, 06:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hahaha

Well I think the younger crowd who's into Top 40 and hip hop and punk would be willing to pay more for the hits. The industry wants to make it a privellege to listen to music on a computer but anyway I too will go back to pirating these labels artists if they do decide to pull out of iTunes. Sony, how do you think I got Evanescence on MY iPod huh? At least another Sony artist Switchfoot publically released a way for us to rip their copy protected CD into iTunes so it's all good.

tallulah14
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Joined: Mar 2005

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09/28, 07:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
price up, purchasing down

if the price goes up on a per song basis, presumably it will go up per album. what i'm likely to do is just but a few songs instead of the whole album. at $9.99 for a complete album i don't mind getting the duds, but if it goes up by much, i'll definitely not bother.

Go Bells
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2004

0

09/28, 07:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Never

I would never pay $3 a song... I might buy a new ringer, once every few months at that price, but I tend to buy a lot more songs a lot more often... I struggle to get friends to even consider buying songs on iTunes at 99 cents a song... They laugh at me at that notion.. They will begin kicking sand in my face if I change the story to $3 a song... Way to go Warner Music, way to piss off your best customers (ones that require no physical product from you, nothing built, replicated, packed, warehoused, shipped, shipped again, etc..)--- If it ain't on iTunes, frankly I ain't buying it to be honest... all the classics, I have on CD or have already bought.. I don't find any new music worth bending over backwards for to be honest-

ender
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 1999

0

09/28, 08:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Stupid Execes

"It's going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead"

So rather than working to understand and then meeting your customer's needs, let's brainwash them to accept our agenda.

And I'm so sick of execs comparing downloading music to downloading ringtones. You don't download 100s or 1000s of ringtones, so $3 apiece for a snippet of sound is not a big deal.

Finally, if all the record companies cut off Apple...can we say collusion? While I would not consider Apple a monopoly because there are many ways (downloading, CDs, etc), all of the major record labels banding together against a reseller would certainly gain the attention of regulators.

Makosuke
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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09/28, 08:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
Count Me In

I used to be one of those casual music "pirates"--I don't buy much music, so on the rare occasion I'd hear something interesting on the radio or in a movie, I'd poke around on the internet to find it since there was no way I'm going to spend $15 and either drive to a store or wait for Amazon to ship a CD just to get one song that I only wanted to listen to a couple times on a whim anyway--by the time I got the song I wouldn't care anyway.

Even then I didn't much care for downloading both on principle and the crappy quality and how hard it was to find the right thing.

When the iTMS came out, it was great, because I could easily find (and preview) exactly the song I want and buy it for a buck legally, which is low enough that I can make no-thought purchases. When they eventually started adding more obscure albums that were quite hard to find anywhere else, I spent more there--I've bought more music on iTMS in the last month than I had in any recent year.

And now greedy record companies think that pulling their music because Apple won't let them double the price on a song that isn't even worth $1 to begin with is going to help their business... I don't think so. Me, I'm certainly going to be spending less on Warner music, not more, and as time goes on I wonder if people like me won't end up as the majority of consumers.

The painful irony of it is that they've got to be making about the same profit off of $10 albums on the iTMS as they do off of anything in a store--a hot new CD never sells for more than $16 or so, and you know a significant chunk of that must be going into the retail channel, while at least $7 of the $10 iTMS charges ends up in their pocket.

ShyGuy91284
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2005

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09/28, 09:32pm | report spam | close Reply |
That would be stupid....

Wasn't the whole point of their online sales to curb piracy because people didn't like spending $20 for a disc when they only want one song? This would probably just force them to resort back to illegal p2p software instead of some place that barely supports the iPod...

bobartig
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2001

0

09/28, 11:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: name me...

another good question, name me 5 good reasons that raising prices would improve online music for consumers. Warner Execs were saying that having all music at $.99/track was bad for the consumer because it went againt free market pricing. Obviously there's an equilibrium price point for any particular music track, and it could very likely be over $.99/track for many of them. But the model itself is the key to iTMS's popularity. A 13-year old kid with their $25 music card knows exactly what they're going to get: 25 of their favorite songs (or maybe a bit more if they buy whole albums). Pepsi and 7-11 can partner w/ Apple and package songs with colored sugar water. It all works because its simple and people know what to expect.

This reminds me of when coke executives tried to design vending machines that raised the price on coke when the weather was hot, and claimed this would be a wonderful boon for consumers because it allowed them to tailor their pricing to demand. Of course, prices didn't go down when the weather got cold... the outcry was such that they had to cancel the project.

Miniryu
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 1999

0

09/29, 02:50am | report spam | close Reply |
only reason I use iTMS

The ONLY reason I use the iTunes Music Store is because it is far faster to find a good quality version of songs I want to hear. My time is too valuable and I am too impatient to find a well encoded copy via peer to peer.

I am willing to pay a buck for that convenience. You are foolish if you believe I will pay any more than that.

ihobson
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2000

0

09/29, 03:18am | report spam | close Reply |
Cartel

There is only one word for reaction to "labels might have no other choice than to cut off Apple's digital music sales in one swift "decapitation" move" and that is CARTEL.

Talk like this just confirms what we've known for a long time, that the small number of major labels colludes to set prices and define terms collectively.

Appropriate investigations by consumer/competition/fair trade bodies around the world should investigate this

iJed
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: May 2001

0

10/02, 07:31am | report spam | close Reply |
If they cut off iTunes...

... I will never again pay for a track from any of the big music companies. Cutting off iTunes would be an admission by the RIAA that music piracy is their new distribution model and that they no longer wish to sell tracks. What a bunch of f****** idiots.

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Warner says cutting off iTunes maybe necessary

updated 02:55 pm EDT, Wed September 28, 2005

Warner may cut off iTunes

CD rental

Life Is All Negotiation

Really...

Why?

Because

Record Exec Aholes

back to using limewire

pirating

re: pirating

name me...

shorter music biz exec:

cooner is right

Labels are Evil

Fine By Me

Hahaha

price up, purchasing down

Never

Stupid Execes

Count Me In

That would be stupid....

re: name me...

only reason I use iTMS

Cartel

If they cut off iTunes...

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Warner says cutting off iTunes maybe necessary

updated 02:55 pm EDT, Wed September 28, 2005

Warner may cut off iTunes

Related Articles

Recent Articles

CD rental

Life Is All Negotiation

Really...

Why?

Because

Record Exec Aholes

back to using limewire

pirating

re: pirating

name me...

shorter music biz exec:

cooner is right

Labels are Evil

Fine By Me

Hahaha

price up, purchasing down

Never

Stupid Execes

Count Me In

That would be stupid....

re: name me...

only reason I use iTMS

Cartel

If they cut off iTunes...

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

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Follow us

on Twitter

10 Most Read

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MacNN Marketplace