Macworld presentation<\/a>?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not easy, there are too many hits.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t even get the video to go until now, at almost midnight.\u00c2\u00a0 The music business used to understand this paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 One of UNDERPLAYING THE MARKET!\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of the baby band playing arenas the very first year after their video went nuclear on MTV, in the old days bands still played theatres, even though they’d sold tonnage.\u00c2\u00a0 Creating DEMAND!\u00c2\u00a0 You felt privileged to BE THERE!\u00c2\u00a0 As opposed to going to the arena and seeing thousands of empty seats, even though twice the capacity of the theatre might be in attendance.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it would be better if technology eliminated the glitches, but the tech companies have got this down, the video game companies have got this down, create less than the market demands and you have a FRENZY!<\/p>\nAnd that’s what happened in iPod world.\u00c2\u00a0 Word was that Apple couldn’t make enough.\u00c2\u00a0 This fucked up non-consumer electronics company underestimated demand again and couldn’t fill orders and thus you should sell the stock, before it goes down.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, at first they expected 12 million iPods to be sold, but the Cupertino pompous braggarts certainly couldn’t deliver more than 10.\u00c2\u00a0 And not everybody wanted one anyway, what with the Nano scratch fiasco and the battery life controversy.\u00c2\u00a0 The tide was finally turning.\u00c2\u00a0 Microsoft and Plays For Sure were going to make inroads.<\/p>\n
But, as the Who sang in "Naked Eye", IT DON’T REALLY HAPPEN THAT WAY AT ALL!<\/p>\n
Apple sold 14 million iPods in the fourth quarter.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than worry about whether you got a device, you should worry whether you bought stock.\u00c2\u00a0 Because as soon as Steve Jobs trumpeted this number this morning the stock jumped 5%, just like that.<\/p>\n
But that’s not the complete story.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple sold 32 million iPods THIS YEAR!\u00c2\u00a0 Well, LAST year, 2005.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the company hasn’t even sold HALF of that in ALL the previous years combined!\u00c2\u00a0 This is beyond mania, this is REVOLUTION!<\/p>\n
Those same Wall Streeters are passing reports about the sales EXPLOSION at the iTunes Music Store after Christmas.\u00c2\u00a0 Using this as evidence the music business has turned a corner.\u00c2\u00a0 NOTHING could be further from the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, you get an iPod, you buy a few tracks at the iTMS.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you even got a gift certificate.\u00c2\u00a0 But that only loads a TINY FRACTION of the music the device holds.\u00c2\u00a0 How are you going to FILL IT?<\/p>\n
Well, first you’re going to rip your CDs.<\/p>\n
Then you’re going to rip your friends’ CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe just hook up their hard drives to YOUR computer and transfer the songs at less than a second a track.\u00c2\u00a0 OR, maybe you’ll download that free software all over the Web and just transfer the songs DIRECTLY FROM YOUR FRIEND’S iPOD TO YOUR COMPUTER!<\/p>\n
Are you getting this?\u00c2\u00a0 We’re approaching critical mass.\u00c2\u00a0 Soon, the only reason to have a CD will be to RIP IT!\u00c2\u00a0 The major labels might be holding on to the old format, but the PUBLIC is abandoning it in DROVES!\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, why don’t you ask how many of those people who got iPods for Christmas got CDs too.\u00c2\u00a0 Not quite ZILCH, but CLOSE!<\/p>\n
Are you scratching your head yet?<\/p>\n
The wave is coming in.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s gaining momentum.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s gonna hit the shore.\u00c2\u00a0 People will only want files.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ll gravitate to the CHEAPEST place to get those files.\u00c2\u00a0 And, it won’t be at the iTMS, it will be via the means delineated above or P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the device holds thousands of tracks, are you gonna pay THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO FILL IT?<\/p>\n
Get this straight.\u00c2\u00a0 People only have a limited amount of disposable income.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not going to spend a much higher percentage of their cash for music today than they did yesteryear.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, instead of twenty albums being a decent collection, the equivalent of 100 ALBUMS is a SMALL collection.<\/p>\n
The device, the iPod, has changed the paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with large hard drives, broadband and P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 While the major labels are working under the old rules, expecting digital tracks to REPLACE physical business, the consumer now wants EVERY record in the store, not just one or TWO!\u00c2\u00a0 And, unless you satiate this demand, you’re leaving money on the table.\u00c2\u00a0 LOTS of money.<\/p>\n
If the business doesn’t figure out soon how to deliver what the customer wants, a vast quantity of unprotected tracks for a low price, labels are going to be LEFT OUT OF THE EQUATION!\u00c2\u00a0 Make no mistake, it’s the LABELS that are devaluing music, not the CONSUMER!<\/p>\n
You’ve got to get EVERYBODY to be a music customer.\u00c2\u00a0 Sell EVERYBODY a plethora of tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And keep creating great new stuff, so they’ll remain hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, keep on marketing CATALOG so they’ll remain hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 God, monetize EVERYTHING that gets this music into people’s hands.\u00c2\u00a0 P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 At the ISP level.\u00c2\u00a0 Or issue trading licenses.\u00c2\u00a0 Just start CHARGING!<\/p>\n
But what about RENTAL?<\/p>\n
Well, rather than tell you why this won’t work conceptually, why it’s a sideshow, I’ve got to quote another Macworld statistic.\u00c2\u00a0 40% of all cars sold in the U.S. in 2006 will be iPod-ready.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, not all will come with the hardware INSTALLED, but you can go to your dealer and buy the kit and VOILA, fuck terrestrial radio, stop carrying around a bunch of CDs!<\/p>\n
This is the XM model.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Tie in with the automobile manufacturers.\u00c2\u00a0 Steve Jobs went to school on Hugh Panero’s efforts, and got greater penetration sooner than HE did.<\/p>\n
And, in case you never noticed, the iPod has got a PROPRIETARY CONNECTOR!\u00c2\u00a0 In OTHER words, if you buy a competitive product, and you want to use it to listen in your car, you’re shit out of luck.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not totally.\u00c2\u00a0 You can employ one of those FM transmitters, that work SO well!\u00c2\u00a0 Or, you can go to crutchfield.com, or some giant box retailer and have some ignorant salesman sell you a connector that might not work whereas you can buy the iPod and you have a seamless solution, just like with iTunes!<\/p>\n
Speaking of iTunes…\u00c2\u00a0 What the FUCK is up with the new version?\u00c2\u00a0 The one distributed today.\u00c2\u00a0 That displays the iTunes Music Store AT ALL TIMES!\u00c2\u00a0 I’M computer-savvy.\u00c2\u00a0 I figured out how to turn it off (there’s a button in the lower right-hand corner of the iTunes window), but MOST people are going to be confronted with this constant sales pitch ALL THE TIME!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s HEINOUS!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not the Apple way.\u00c2\u00a0 MAYBE this allows you to look at what you own and compare it with what you might want.\u00c2\u00a0 But not really, this is MICROSOFT-territory.\u00c2\u00a0 Taking advantage of desktop space to insure dominance.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple, update and remove this default IMMEDIATELY!\u00c2\u00a0 You’re just going to piss consumers OFF!<\/p>\n
And the FM transmitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Yeah, that’s what I want with my iPod, FM.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that why I bought the iPod to BEGIN WITH?\u00c2\u00a0 To get RID of FM?<\/p>\n
Apple couldn’t use satellite, because mobile satellite functions too poorly for the Apple brand name.<\/p>\n
But, the product is so expensive, almost fifty bucks for a RADIO, that at least Wall Street will be happy (and, how the radio comes up on the screen is cool…)<\/p>\n
So, where’s the Mac Mini movie store?\u00c2\u00a0 Where’s the new iPod shuffle?<\/p>\n
Well, Steve Jobs has learned to keep the public jumping.\u00c2\u00a0 As if a hit act only gave a week’s notice and surprised us with a whole new album.\u00c2\u00a0 Expect more.\u00c2\u00a0 Not too far away from now.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like we got multiple announcements in the fall.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got us hooked, we all want to see the Steve show, he hasn’t let us down yet.<\/p>\n
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Holy fuck, the labels are SCREWED! Did you watch the Macworld presentation?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not easy, there are too many hits.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t even get the video to go until now, at almost midnight.\u00c2\u00a0 The music business used to understand this paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 One of UNDERPLAYING THE MARKET!\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of the baby band playing arenas the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-279","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}