Some thoughts... increased sound quality + no DRM + same price per album will likely mean that I'll start buying music with iTunes. However:

Single track downloads priced at $1.30 means that the record industry is trying to protect their older business model of selling complete albums, which remain the same $9.99 price. This sort of makes sense, since musicians don't rent a studio, hire a producer, etc per track, but for a set of songs.

I think that this model is bad for consumers though, since so many albums have 1-2 good songs and 8-10 filler tracks. There are bands where this doesn't apply, but I'm guessing that if you analyze iTunes sales, most are single tracks. The market doesn't want to pay for filler.

Keeping the price of single tracks at $1 makes better music: the musicians will stop writing filler since it won't sell and they have to pay for the cost of recording it. Musicians will not be able to count on having one good song to drive the sale of a $15 CD, so all their work will have to be good.

Actually, I don't know why Apple doesn't just cut the music industry out entirely and make iTunes a record label that deals directly with the artists. Even if the musician's cut of the iTunes price is 50%, that is, like 5 times more than what they get now.

Technology makes things more efficient, and cutting out the recording industry middlemen seems like a good thing, but pricing singles at $1.30 is still abusing customers and not giving them what they want.

One other thing that I'd like is the ability to re-download any material that I've bought. Since Apple has my email address and credit card information, they know exactly what I've bought. Xbox live lets you do this with content that you purchase, but that may be more because of the small hard drives in the Xbox and the fact that you can't copy data between the Xbox and PC.

It is a shame that it is being released in AAC format not MP3, but DRM free means you could convert it no problem - although you lose quality. For me the format has to be mp3. I have too big an investment (equipment) in that format to change now.

This is a very good first step though. I'm sure that this will put pressure on the other labels when EMI DRM free musics sells take off. Money talks.

Its good that it is not going to be specific to iTunes. Eventually they will sell music though other stores and you can buy them in the bit rate and format of your choice including wma, mp3, aac, and other formats.

Apple will let you upgrade your existing EMI songs to DRM free for .30. DRM tracks are 1.29 a piece instead of 1.00, but the Album prices is the same. Hmm. Since EMI still plans to sell the DRM versions, does this mean that you'll be able to choose DRM or non-DRM albums for the same price? Why would anyone do that?

I still feel that 1.30 a track is rip off. But I also don't think $1 per track is a good deal either. I think that once all the other record companies are forced to go DRM free also, then maybe the market dynamics will take over and we'll see prices lower.

Funny thing... it seemed to me that the timing of Job's anti-DRM essay was done so that he could take 'credit' for this. Interesting that it has already came out that the EMI decision happened a long time ago. As I recall most people speculated that Job's essay was a response to a curent lawsuit with some country or another claiming that the current iPod + iTunes combo unfairly locks other out.

As for Apple as a music label... That is about the same as Microsoft selling their own PC hardware. Apple is walking a very fine line with the record and movie companies. They are trying to convince those guys that online sales are a good thing, that they should use iTunes (in some cases exclusively) and that they should stick with a fixed pricing scheme. If Apple even hinted at competing with them directly, I think things would fall apart very fast.

Cutting the record labels out of the path is inevitable however. The Web is the great equalizer. All that is really missing for an Indie artist is marketing / word of mouth. I think a 'YouTube' of Indie music videos would solve that problem.

I bought a CD this weekend (I hate doing that, for every dollar I give RIAA some poor 7 year old will be sued). I would have rather purchased it online, it would have saved me a trip. When I came home, I ripped the disc and threw it in a box. I'll never touch that disc again, unless I lose the mp3s.

John said, "I bought a CD this weekend..." Are you still working on completing your Michael Bolton collection?

Ahh you mock me. For my money there's nothing better than 'When a man loves a woman.'

Seriously though, I bought a CD that was actually produced in this decade - you should try that sometime.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I wonder if the DRM free music will be stamped with a finger print or a watermark. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just curious.

I believe that iTunes watermarks the MP3s that your rip from CDs. If you right click on a song in iTunes and select "Get Info" and look at the comment field for that track, it's usually empty. If you look at that same file's comment field in Winamp, there is some kind of GUID or something.

Now, the MP3 ID3v1/2 tag "specs" are largely de facto so it's possible that this is simply not an issue, but it would be an interesting experiment to see how well correlated those GUIDs are across a CD or user.

I generally disagree with the "core competency" arguments when companies move into new areas. Often, the first moves aren't that impressive. I remember looking at the original 5 GB iPod and not being impressed, but now the iPod is a huge component of Apple's success and I've bought several. If you don't try to launch new things, people will accuse you of not diversifying your revenue stream.

I like it when companies try new things and introduce new products. I don't think that I'll be buying any of the products announced yesterday though. The speaker thing is just to big and blocky.

I think that the whole Intel transition timeline was bogus: they initially said that the entire Mac line would go Intel by the end of 2006, and now it looks like it will really be mid-2006. I'll bet that was the plan all along, since it makes them look good (to investors, especially).

The Mac-Mini doesn't really have an Achilles Heel in the graphics space, since anyone buying one isn't really looking for performance. You'll need the iMac or Desktop for that. People buying Minis will be playing solitaire or mahjong.

While I agree that graphics performance is not the top scenario for the mini, it is a shame to take a big step backwards (shared video memory??) from the previous version while increasing the price. I like that they added the remote and optical in / out. Good move.

The Inquirer as a few things to say about Apple's new, uh hum, hifi.

More quotes from the ruling.

Openp2p.com

I wonder how this will affect bittorrent index sites. Most of them advertise being able to get copyrighted content "even though they don't actually host any of it". Seems that just being an index and generating ad revenue on a site might fall under this same pattern of thinking. Are we going to have to be careful what we link to?

Yeah Joel is an intertesting character. Its not that his company is super sucessful, just that he managed to become well known via his blog. He is not always right, so it will be good to see the good and bad of his experience.
I predict that it won't be long before we start seeing internet video shows like real world only for start ups.

We just finished up a project where a I led a team of interns through the test phase. Another dev lead led them through the development phase. I can't imagine the drama that will go on with the cameras there. I wouldn't think that a reality show about software engineers would be all that exciting. Do you think they'll make it exciting with added drama. Or am I missing someting and software development actually makes good film every else but where I work?

Well, I guess it depends what you mean by "super successful". Apparently, he only employs 5 full time workers and he profits have doubled every year for the past 5 years... if that isn't success, I don't know what is.

And they only work 40 hrs a week. In general this will probably be interesting only to a select few, but I think with cameras floating around, we'll see some good cubicle antics and pranks.

Yeah good call on the 'super successful' comment. I suppose I needed to adjust my scale. I wouldn't mind have a small fraction of that kind of success. I think a better way to phase my point would be that there are many similar companies with similar success stories that don't get anywhere near the nerd press that Joel and Eric Sink seem to spin up.

Wheelson, well you wouldn't think that software development would make for interesting drama, but some geeks like me find shows like startup.com very facinating. Of course there is always 'manufactured' drama on reality TV, I mean come on does anyone really think Ozzy is THAT stupid? I think back in the bubble days it would have been interesting to have near 'real-time' glimses into some of the top names during their rise and fall. Certainly not mainstream, but something you could stream of the web would have been cool.

Don't get me wrong, I'll watch this with great interest and to me, it will be interesting. I guess what I'm saying is that I hope they don't try to make it appeal to a wider audience by "spicing" it up with lame/fake overly dramatic arguments and antics. Also, another way to make it appeal to a wider audience would be to focus on the drama rather than the technical details of product development. If I want drama I can watch NBC so for this I'd hope they focus on the technical details.

I was sort of kidding about the "is it really that exciting" as more of a comment on how unexciting TV shot at my work would be whether it was geared toward the geek or not.

Personally I'm very interested to see just how awesome these guys and this company is. I read through his site and if there is truth behind his words then I should be able to learn a lot from watching how they do things on this show.

After going through a similar process with interns I'll be interested to see how they balance things like documentation with the inherent desire in interns to not write documentation, or to write it poorly. I'll specifically be interested in the portion where they start the testing. I'll be interested to see what methods they use and to see what kind of attitude they take toward testing.

Evil Google, for inserting that image into our blog! I'm going to file a bug! Why wasn't this the first result? My PageRank-o-meter certainly puts it up there, so to speak.

I've updated the entry to reflect a solution. As a side note - on Monday I came in to find our Windows Server 2003 machine completely locked up. It did reboot succesfully after a hard reboot, and after looking through the logs I found that it had installed the same security update as listed above, auto-rebooted, and was not able to start up successfully. The machine was down all weekend. I immediately turned auto-update off (although it still checks to see if there are any updates). I will only install patches one at a time, and make sure I'm there to verify the machine will reboot afterwards.

Remember - even RAID5 won't help you if it's the OS that hoses the filesystem!

That's what always bothered me about that show - the blatant need to stoop to such tactics to try and get ratings. A good Scifi show should stand on its own. If you want to through in some extra sizzle occasionally fine. But in Enterprises case it came across as pathetic to me. I never got into it though, probably due to the fact that every time I see Scott Bakula, all I can think about is him in some stupid dress from Quantum leap.

Sizzle is all well and good, but what about the steak?

My secret hope is the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie (opens one week before the last installment of a ruined Star Wars franchise) will breath new life into Science Fiction. I think it has a chance because of the still rather unique blend of humor and Science Fiction. However, the things that defined good Science Fiction are no replaced by the humor, instead they are enhanced.

Now, the movie could be an expensive version of the TV show and totally suck, but I'm holding on to the hope that it will rock. Also coming on the heals of LOTR and while standing beside Star Wars in the theater, I hope people will be reminded of what good Science Fiction should look like and the genre will be renewed in popularity.

Or maybe it will end up being the new Ice Pirates.

he he, Ice Pirates. I think we need a new post on old cheezy scifi shows. Of course we need to tie them back to Netflix for easy rental:

Ice Pirates>

Ice Pirates, I loved that movie.