A great day for Apple.<\/p>\n
Not such a good day for Amazon, Google and the recording industry.<\/p>\n
Apple has a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Android penetration.\u00c2\u00a0 I could mention RIM\/BlackBerry, but if you think that company and its devices still count, you’re Canadian.\u00c2\u00a0 Android sales have superseded those of iPhones.\u00c2\u00a0 How to beat back the tide?<\/p>\n
Software.<\/p>\n
Software is harder to sell than hardware.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t see it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the difference between admiring someone from afar and getting to really know them.\u00c2\u00a0 They may look beautiful from a distance, but up close and personal you might find nothing to converse about. Software is the conversation.\u00c2\u00a0 And no one’s software works as well as Apple’s, because of device integration.<\/p>\n
Sure, the iPod looked cool.\u00c2\u00a0 But Apple won because of iTunes and synching and…\u00c2\u00a0 Software.\u00c2\u00a0 People eventually get the message.<\/p>\n
And they’re gonna get the message about iCloud and when they go to their mobile carrier they’re gonna pay extra for an iPhone, just like they pay extra for Apple laptops and desktops.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll buy iPads, not Android devices.<\/p>\n
This is a huge win for Apple.<\/p>\n
Google finds itself lost in the wilderness once again.\u00c2\u00a0 Trying to do everything, Google does nothing well other than search and e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 Google is the new Sony.\u00c2\u00a0 If someone ever comes up with a better search engine, which is not impossible, Google is toast.<\/p>\n
As for Amazon?\u00c2\u00a0 Music and consumer cloud storage is an afterthought.\u00c2\u00a0 Amazon would like to win here, but if it doesn’t, it can shrug its shoulders.\u00c2\u00a0 Amazon still owns retail in so many categories, and is the king of server space rental.<\/p>\n
As for the music industry…<\/p>\n
Unlike Apple, the music industry is very shortsighted.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no tomorrow, only today.\u00c2\u00a0 Steve Jobs is seriously ill and he’s looking to tomorrow, the labels still haven’t pulled their heads out of yesteryear.<\/p>\n
How do you make music pay in the future?\u00c2\u00a0 How do you get a ton of revenue for recordings?<\/p>\n
By getting everyone to pay.<\/p>\n
Think about that, it’s not a hard concept.\u00c2\u00a0 The outline has already been drawn by the mobile companies.\u00c2\u00a0 You drop the price until everyone buys in, then you slowly raise the price under the rubric of adding new features, i.e. texting.\u00c2\u00a0 Twenty five years ago a cell phone was a grand and calls were a buck a minute.\u00c2\u00a0 Now plans are dirt cheap and cell phones are free, even ten year olds possess them.\u00c2\u00a0 I can legitimately posit that not a single person reading this is without a handset.<\/p>\n
That’s penetration.<\/p>\n
How do we get everybody to pay for music?\u00c2\u00a0 By dropping the price and making it easy.<\/p>\n
You call that subscription.<\/p>\n
Cable TV is a subscription.\u00c2\u00a0 As is Netflix.\u00c2\u00a0 As is your cell phone plan.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t say people hate subscriptions, that they don’t want them, it’s about offering a great service at a fair price.<\/p>\n
The record industry refuses to do this.<\/p>\n
Don’t point to Rhapsody and Napster, that’s like trying to sell a 2001 computer, or a Vanilla Ice record.<\/p>\n
How can you get everybody to buy a mobile subscription?<\/p>\n
We can debate that all day long, but it’s become almost irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Because today, Apple killed subscription.<\/p>\n
Yes, iCloud scan and match is subscription.\u00c2\u00a0 But the concept of renting your music, like you rent cable TV, that’s kaput.<\/p>\n
And what did it cost?<\/p>\n
$150 million.\u00c2\u00a0 For approximately $40 million to the bottom line of each recording company, you know they’re not going to share the revenue with artists, the labels sold out their future.<\/p>\n
It’s like Nintendo being paid a bunch of money to never develop the Wii.<\/p>\n
It’s like Electronic Arts being paid to never develop mobile games.<\/p>\n
It’s a denial of the future.<\/p>\n
Who in the hell is going to buy a music subscription for even $3 a month when for $25 a year you can have everything you own, even stole, at your fingertips via iCloud.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s if you scan and match, if you bought the stuff on iTunes, it’s FREE!<\/p>\n
Spotify, MOG, Rdio, they were just trumped by Apple.\u00c2\u00a0 By an industry looking for short term profits unaware of the future.<\/p>\n
This is not hard.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I said, subscriptions are everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 But like Wimpy, labels would rather have a hamburger today instead of owning a McDonald’s tomorrow.<\/p>\n
How cheaply they were bought off!\u00c2\u00a0 $150 million is nothing to Apple, look at its cash hoard!\u00c2\u00a0 Apple gets an opportunity to dominate with its iPads and iPhones for this paltry payment.<\/p>\n
It boggles the mind.<\/p>\n
Yes, few people are paying for subscriptions today.<\/p>\n
But right now Spotify and MOG, even the aforementioned Rhapsody, synch your playlists to the handset wirelessly, almost instantly, 2000+ tracks in the case of Spotify, but almost no one knows about this, because almost no one has used these services.<\/p>\n
It’s like Amazon trying to compete with Apple selling music.\u00c2\u00a0 People would rather pay twelve times the price to Apple for the GaGa album.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple has retail stores throughout the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple’s infrastructure is so great, no one can compete.<\/p>\n
Steve Jobs stands on stage and says it’s all about mobile and the music industry is too stupid to get this.\u00c2\u00a0 Afraid to make a free desktop offer to ensure a healthy subscription model in mobile, the record industry just shot itself in the foot.<\/p>\n
You’re selling dope here.\u00c2\u00a0 Spotify is free on the desktop.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’ve got to pay on the mobile handset, handsomely, don’t you get it, that’s where the growth is!<\/p>\n
Where’s the growth now?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not in digital track sales.\u00c2\u00a0 And for a measly sum you can put everything you’ve STOLEN in the cloud.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels made this deal for a percentage of $25 a year, for a service most people won’t even use?<\/p>\n
This is so dumb it’s almost incomprehensible.<\/p>\n
The labels have been snookered by Steve Jobs, who could sense their ignorance and preyed upon them.<\/p>\n
Let me ask you, how come Steve Jobs believes in renting movies and not music?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it funny that the scan and match service is a subscription?\u00c2\u00a0 Apple could have an all you can eat music subscription in the future, but why?<\/p>\n
If people have the history of recorded music at their fingertips for one low price it doesn’t only benefit the labels, but the artists, the promoters, everyone in the music ecosystem.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the barrier to checking out new music is so low that people will do so and spend money in music.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we’ve ensured the future of a last century model, where you’ve got to buy it to hear it.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n
Unbelievable.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A great day for Apple. Not such a good day for Amazon, Google and the recording industry. Apple has a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Android penetration.\u00c2\u00a0 I could mention RIM\/BlackBerry, but if you think that company and its devices still count, you’re Canadian.\u00c2\u00a0 Android sales have superseded those of iPhones.\u00c2\u00a0 How to beat back the tide? Software. Software […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[4,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-music-business","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-icloud","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4248,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions\/4248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}