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NYT: Apple Finds the Future for Online Music

updated 10:40 am EDT, Thu May 29, 2003


The New York Times looks at the success of the Apple iTunes Store: "pple Computer seems to have the future of online music in its hands for the moment. Its new service, iTunes Music Store, has been the first real success story in the long effort to sell music over the Internet. In just its first month of operation the service, by the company's estimate, has , at 99 cents each. This is an impressive figure considering the limited access that music fans now have to the service." The article also notes a few shortcomings such as a limited music collection, major-label only representation, the lack of community building functions, and no affiliate program.


by MacNN Staff

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  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:01am | report spam | Reply |

    Ouch

    1 million songs the first week, 1 million the second week, but they close the first month of operation with 3 million.
    No wonder Apple hasn't been seen gloating these past two weeks.
    This looks like one h*** of a slowdown.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:02am | report spam | Reply |

    NY Times

    lies.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:10am | report spam | Reply |

    Woo

    Way to go pple Computer!

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:12am | report spam | Reply |

    Re:ouch

    "This looks like one h*** of a slowdown. "

    What an idiot...

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:14am | report spam | Reply |

    Still needs

    1) CD-quality (lossless) songs, and songs encoded in user desired formats (ogg, aac, mp3, wma, etc.), with a good variety of bitrates (80-225 at least)

    2) Full CD artwork including inserts. Ablity to remove artwork from songs. Ablity to print out artwork for burned CDs.

    3) Auto-attach lyrics to a song

    4) Community-building features (chats, artist chats, song ratings/charts, etc.)

    5) Future: more artists, more songs, more video clips, live music events (including video), live artist interviews, and "ehem, when you get to it" windows support.

    I think #1 is the biggest slowdown for people, other then posssibly the price per song. I've heard many people say they won't download lossy song files. It's EXTREMELY important I think that apple offer at the very least A) lossly CD-quality files and B) Full artwork. Why? Because that's what you get when you buy a CD. The digital method should duplicate the real world method, so there's no particular reason for choosing "real world" over iTMS (except maybe price).

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:19am | report spam | Reply |

    re: ouch

    "This looks like one h*** of a slowdown."

    So you're saying that apple needs to keep up a million songs a week in order for iTMS to be a success. Get real. The first two weeks of ANY product release (if it's a good product, one people have been waiting for) are usually huge. It slows down as people lose interest, and consumers have notoriously short attention spans. Doesn't mean anything. YET.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:24am | report spam | Reply |

    BS

    I can't believe anyone is complaining about a 'limited' collection. Give them a little time, its only been around for a month. And, some of the missing music isn't available anywhere.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:27am | report spam | Reply |

    Apple's Music Service

    Apple's music service is awesome, will only improve and will maintain the lead, I'm sure.

    Peace!

    -GB

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:35am | report spam | Reply |

    TROLL

    Who the h*** let the troll out?

    A few quick things...

    1) 3 million songs in the first month is nothing to sneeze at considering Apple only has a 2% - 5% market share...
    What You Need To Download Music From The Apple Store
    - Live in the US (or have a CC from the US)
    - Own a Mac
    - Run OS X Jaguar
    - Have iTunes 4
    - Have broadband (almost required)
    - Be a generally honest person (AKA Willing to pay for something they can get for "free")
    That isn't a large population...

    2) You will never see lossless music online (who the F@#$ wants to download a 20+ MB song?).

    3) Auto-attach lyrics to a song??? I'm sure a lot of people would love that... like 15 or so...

    You said: "Future: more artists, more songs, more video clips, live music events (including video), live artist interviews, and "ehem, when you get to it" windows support."

    What the F@#$ do you think they are doing?

    I don't want to apologize for Apple, but posting rants is c***. I agree that more cover art is needed, and options should be added, but give them a brake!

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    05/29, 11:41am | report spam | Reply |

    perhaps

    "CD-quality (lossless) songs, and songs encoded in user desired formats (ogg, aac, mp3, wma, etc.), with a good variety of bitrates (80-225 at least)"

    I'm not sure about you, but I don't forsee WMA format ever happening. That's just common sense - not because I'm a Mac user - but no one in the industry is supporting that format unless they're required to by microsoft.

    It might be nice to have variable bitrates, however that comes at a cost - which most people probably don't realize. If you offered three different bitrate's per song, you're coming close to tripling your overhead for the service (tripling the amount of data... someone's got to program that, and that data has to be stored somewhere, not to mention other scenerios). Higher bitrates also could mean higher bandwidth cost and higher price points per song. Imagine 99 cents at 128, $1.29 for 256 and $1.49 for 384. Then imagine multiple formats with multiple bitrates per format. Say 3 different formats, with 3 different bitrates per format... 9 versions of the same song? Now that's a mess.

    Most average consumers couldn't tell you what a bitrate is, or even what format of music they're buying. These consumers aren't dumb, they just don't care to learn all of that information. Staying with one format keeps everything simple and easy to use. Isn't that the hallmark of Apple computing? Ease of use?

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