See this great article on Wired.com about how the music companies are now desperately trying to prop up some other online retailer as the alternative to Apple, and even sacrificing DRM to do it. Money quote from Edgar Bronfman Jr. where he admits that consumers now care more about their choice of music player than they do about the music itself: "Never before in the history of content has the hardware been more valuable than the software. You think about the VCR or the video cassette -- the video cassette always had more value than the VCR that you shoved it into. Apple has been able to turn that model on its head."
Yes we have. Ain't we cool?
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Bronfman finally speaks the truth
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
31 comments:
I guess one could have a field day writing a the medium IS the message thesis here....
I've been making the case among my friends and colleagues that Apple's biggest strength in their negotiations with content providers is the fact that Apple makes compelling devices.
I hope Apple recognizes this, as the current generation of iPods is not quite so compelling. With video out restrictions and incompatibility with a significant number of 3rd part docks and accessories, Apple is hurting their longer term strategy for short term gain.
I'm sad to say that I won't be buying one of the current generation iPods, despite waiting patiently for a higher capacity iPod. The 160GB iPod Classic would be perfect if it had just been designed as a higher capacity 5.5G iPod and not diminished audio quality by using cheaper components, or taken away video capabilities that the 5.5G iPod has, or broken compatibility with existing accessories.
If Apple continues this direction, and more people decide to not buy Apple products as a result, it could tilt the content/hardware power equation back in favor of the content providers. Consumers everywhere will be the losers if that happens.
FSJ,
It's the beginning of the end. Apple won the war.
When songs are cheap, as the Amazon prices promise, consumers will buy more.
But where can they fit all the songs they own? New and more capacious iPods, of course.
How do you organize and find the few you want to listen to today? iTunes and iPod software, of course.
Vegan Vegan
(way ahead of the tards)
It's just like that Gordon Ramsay. I bet his food tastes like crap, but he's got such an ergonomic blender . . .
hah... go FSJ!
someone should photoshop up a SJ borg, but make it all white. a pun on the Bill Gates Borg avatar.
Wow... I guess apple can't have it's cake and eat it too.
They got DRM free, just not at their store.
Yes maybe icecool like the highscool. But i stay in same problem as before. I like Bronfman Sr. (the young i don't know who's is)and do understand well his sadness about the holcaust and the maked money with hard drinks.
But games with highscores and thoughts like the highscoolkillers arn't as the whisky really not my thing. The grape wine is not blood of xp, but weird twice like "the fruit of eden", asl.
So let's just say that this Amazon thing takes off?
Let's also say that Amazon takes the lead...
So aren't the record companies going to be back at square one say in 7-10 years. Just guessing that Apple loses major market share of the music download industry. Just saying the there won't be a really Cool Zune player in the future.
.89$ vs .99$.
Were do you go?
Kids, teens are particular at this stage of the game.
iTune music store is cool. iPod cool.
So what about amazon? Cool no. Adults will go there, yes.
But is this really a big power play against Apple?
No
Did Apple really think that this would go on forever?
NO
Did Apple put all there eggs in to the iTunes basket?
No
Do they have a backup plan?
FUCK yeah.
Look at how Apple has strategically played out the last few years since Steve came back.
Cards close to the chest. CALCULATED, REPEAT, C A L C U L A T E D Moves.
Dumped OS9
OSX
Dumped PPC technology
Moved to Intel
All transitions hardware software flawless
They made moves that eveyone balked at and yet pulled them all off without a hitch and meeting deadlines
Patience is a virtue and Apple has play the chess game Brillently.
I watch with anticipation to see all that they have up their sleeves.
Apple is going places faster than any other tech company has for the last Ten years.
Apple will go down in history as one of the greatest corporate stories known to man.
Iacoca, and Jobs.
FSJ, you're hiring OJ Simpson as a hitman?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/09/25/inmates_suit_claims_o_j_simpson_is_hitman_for_steve_jobs.html
and the written complaint
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/09/25/inmates_suit_claims_o_j_simpson_is_hitman_for_steve_jobs.html&page=2
Junior lost over $2 billion of the family's bootlegging money with Vivendi. Now he's losing his shirt in the music business.
And with the DVD it often cost more than the player it was going into . . .
OK, first Vivendi whines that their 70% cut is "indecent" - even though iTunes relieves them of having to manufacture, package, inventory, distribute, ship, merchandise or TAKE RETURNS of any physical retail product. Think how much cost and RISK that eliminates... even though the old record chains were ALSO paying majors around 70% of retail. Dipshits.
Now Edgar B, the biggest tool in the history of the biz, is out there showing his true colors about music - totally devaluing his own product. Does he think 100,000,000 people would walk around with iPods if they were just bitchin travel alarm clocks?
Why do these jackasses hate on anybody who figures out how to sell digital music? They could all get into business with Emusic tomorrow...but they'd have to give up their precious DRM. Boo-hoo-hoo.
And I don't want to hear any more crocodile tears about how they're protecting their beloved serfs, er, I mean, artists. All they're want to protect is their own expense accounts - they care more about what's for lunch than about music.
I got an ad reading "There's a blackberry for everyone" in my RSS feed. Wha???
so are you gonna fess up about the arrangement between you and OJ?
or what?
Hats off to Bronfam for recognizing/admitting this fact publicly. It must have been a very tough admission.
edgar is hoist on his own petard! he is so dim he is a tardtard.
Fake Steve, these guys still don't understand why you guys dominate. You should come out and say, "It's the iPod bitches. Multitouch, have you heard of it?"
Bronfman really shouldn't be involved in the selling of music, because he doesn't have a clue about how people actually listen to it, or what motivates them to pay for it.
Consumers are loyal to the iPod because they've objectively come to the conclusion that it's a great product. They're also loyal to the artists they like, provided that those artists consistently make good music.
What they're not loyal to is record labels who have defiantly refused to sell them digital content in a manner that is palatable to their needs as consumers. Can anyone blame them?
Fake Steve, I was outraged to see this ad exploiting one of your fellow vegeterians. Surely you can use your vast power to speak out against the objectification of women?
http://www.ecorazzi.com/?p=4031
Wakey Wakey Bronfman, cutting the family fortune in half wasn't enough indication of your pigheadedness and now you have to go prove the world all over again?
Idiots like you turned the music industry in to this insatiable quest for relevancy. All because you lousy sack of 1 ply-sheets don't recognize a changing business model and because you are so fooking entrenched in the old stale ideas of what you deem as the eventual outcome of your strategy that you keep on truckin at all cost, even if that means giving it all away.
Blaming Jobs or the iPod for your misery is just about the only shot you can take, glad to see here finally. Yeah I bought an iPod because it looks cool, not because it's the best at doing what it does or that it’s the first one to make sense.
Your kind disrespects rule ONE.
1. "Customer is always right"
2. Don't forget 1.
Tell me something, when you employ a service that sucks it to you, does you submissive self go back for seconds? What makes your sh*t stink any less?
You lousy greedy sack of crap forgot the rule book. who the fark are you? Go zuck a zune.
---------
Zuckturd is going to be next tart-cart candidate acknowledging Steve is right.
What? The author is wrong. I spend way more money on applications than Hardware and OS (17" MBPro and OSX). And if the computer is stolen - I'd regret the lost content (docs, photos, movies...) I created - not the hardware and applications which are easily replaceable.
Same is true for Video iPod. 2-3 CD's/DVD's a month over a year exceed the cost of the player.
The problem with the music industry is that they're controlling the distribution of 99% shitty content. I've probably spent more buying music already purchased in other formats (LP>Cassette>CD>Box sets) than new content.
The great - really great thing about the iPod/iTunes combo is the immediacy and quality of content. I've ripped my old CD's. I'll rip my DVDs. And I'll control the distribution of my content.
Basically - Apple created a content distribution model that gets out of the way of the consumer; the UI is transparent. And if I want to take my music elsewhere, I'll burn CD's.
Apple doesn't keep getting between me and my shit. The music industry doesn't get that. They keep getting between me and my shit. Like how I've bought the same stuff in different formats all these years. That jig's up.
Hey music industry: since music is digital, I'm not going to be buying old stuff anymore. So you'd better start making new shit that's worth buying. Time to get your head out of your ass and go find the next Zepplin/Dylan/Stones/etc. ...cause I've ripped their stuff from CD and so I don't need to buy it anymore.
i think the record labels are still missing the point...
they want to create competition with apple, so they are considering DRM free
isn't apple's price of selling a song in itunes pretty much all go to the labels? why would they want to compete with themselves? and even if amazon sells DRM free for i am sure they will mark up for profit.. i mean, if Amazon sells the songs at the same price as Apple, they will make little money. Apple sells at such a low rate simply to push ipods.. so i don't really see how Amazon is going to compete. even with DRM free music. plus, people will buy this DRM free music, and play it on their ipods.. which is where Apple makes its real money..
For crying out loud, El Jobso isn't a vegetarian. He likes the fish taco too much to swear off meat entirely.
your not just the coolest you rule namaste
Hey that's cool...
Come and visit my Blog :)
www.seemun.com
Anytime I eat Her Majesty's corgis, I do two things: add pepper to taste, and capitalize Her Majesty.
SORRY STEVE I THINK SWIFT SCREWED UP HIS POST.
Hmm. So lets see how this is going. Apple edges its way into the music business, provides a cutting edge service + hardware combo that actually works and is fun to use, marginalizes the music industry middlemen who everybody hates, and becomes dominant.
Now Apple is edging its way into the phone business, providing a cutting edge hardware platform that actually works and is fun to use, and has potential to marginalize the phone companies who everybody hates to become dominant.
Do we detect a pattern here? Apple identifies an industry where its customers are held captive by large companies whom everybody hates and moves to dominate by providing cutting edge alternatives.
So FSJ, what's next? I know you call AppleTV a 'hobby' but everybody hates their cable companies almost as much as their phone companies. Go for it I say! Replacing hate with chid-like wonder can only be good for the universal Karma.
DD
Be the Man (On This Night) Foster, Miles...
i'm a rocker too...
E out.
It isn't so much that "Apple has been able to turn that model on its head," as much as Edgar Bronfman Jr. has his head up his ass.
Honestly, his family's fortune was made smuggling booze across the border during prohibition and somehow he is the paragon of virtue in a piracy infested world? Okay, sure.
The good news is that Junior is doing his best to make a small fortune out of a large one. I guess that inside he secretly wants to give back the family fortune built on organized crime.
FSJ, this is hardly a new idea. Man, I'm surprised that you don't know better because your very own pal Bono realized the primacy of music hardware over software over a decade ago, as you can read from the following excerpt from Bill Flanagan's book U2: At the End of the World:
“In fact, what I think people don’t understand about the music business is that people do not buy stereos to play their records; people buy records to play their stereos! Think about it from the consumers’ point of view; the purchase of the hardware is much more expensive that the purchase of the software. If you’re living in the real world, which I certainly was when I was sixteen, and you buy one of those m_____f_____s, you want to buy the record that plays it well. That’s why the Beatles again run parallel to technology. Sgt. Pepper was a stereo album. When the success of Sgt. Pepper is written about, that’s just not mentioned. But this was hardware companies putting out this new device for listening to music, and here was a way to show off the thing. This can be followed through to Pink Floyd, as it further developed, and on into CD and the success of Dire Straits.”
I have to admit that Bono’s onto something. In the early seventies teenagers went wild for stereo headphones, and bought albums that were mixed to swing back and forth, from right to left. Recently, new bands such as Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails have taken advantage of the wide dynamic range of CDs to make albums that jump from very soft to very loud in a way that vinyl records never could.
“And if you want to know why white kids are listening to rap music … it’s a lot to do with the hardware systems, the car systems, club systems. The bottom end has to be tight so you can turn it up. Suddenly records that sounded great on a stereo or even the radio – that FM rock sound – suddenly don’t sound so great compared to those guys. You know, you put on a Public Enemy record, and it sounds like the end of the world!”
Bill Flanagan; U2: At the End of the World; pp. 28-29
Post a Comment