arstechnica.com — Over the past few years, we have watched Apple climb the music sales chart courtesy of the iTunes. Last month we learned that Apple passed Best Buy to become the number two retailer in the the US. Now, Apple has ascended to the top of the charts, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time ever, according to the NPD MusicWatch Survey.
Apr 3, 2008 View in Crawl 4
txaggie08Apr 3, 2008
HAHA! I told my friends that in high school back in 2000 when it was still "cool" to bring your CD collection to school with your portable CD player. I bought a ridiculously priced "mp3 player" that seemed to mystify most of the idiots at my school. But you were so visionary. It wasn't , I dunno, the obvious and inevitable CD killer. skyz next prediction: Faster Internet connections and bigger hard drives will lead to people download HD movies and TV in mass on something called "BitTorrent"
cthellisApr 3, 2008
Con...gratulations?
monkeyfartsApr 3, 2008
iTunes is a distributor of music, not a record label. The record labels rob the musicians, not Apple.
skeletorcaresApr 3, 2008
I’m well aware of the burn to cd re-rip non-sense, I see my apple friends do it all the time. I would never ever buy DRM music. PERIOD. The reason Sony won't release their music to apple drm free because they want money, and apple will not give them what they want. Just as apple gives the lowest amount of money per song to the artist compared to any other medium or distributer of electronic music. Yet, songs on iTunes are 99 cents, songs on amazon, .89 cents. My emusic account, works out to 30 cents or so. There are many reasons to hate apple. That’s just a few. Sony and those other companies also didn't want to get stuck in contracts with a company that is by all financial terms is risky, at best. Especially in an emerging industry that apple is slowly being edged out of, despite being the number one retailer right this second. Double especially for a service, they can easily provide for probably cheaper. And thirdly, resell the same media AGAIN, for their profit because of stupid DRM (for a common user or a person who wants to degrade their music library with copies of copies of copies)The most important thing is, money. MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!! Apple wants it all, and they'll do anything to get it, lie cheat steal, they don't care. I just read in wired that steve (blow)jobs made his parking lot reservation free, so no matter who it is if they get their late, they are circling for a spot. Showing no hierarchy. Sounds great right!? Except for Steve, he parks in the handicapped spot, to the dismayed post-it notes of his apple works saying 'park different'. Another idea that sounded great until steve jobs got his I’m-in- too- much-of-a-hurry- to- make- too- much- money- to- do- it- right- but- still- look- tolly- cool-doing-it mentality. Steve Jobs and Apple are really just an assh**e company that just wants money.Look at their new ads 'software and hardware are all made by the same people'. That’s just a lie, flat out public bold faced lie. Unless the ‘people’ in that sentence are 'earth people' it’s a lie. Their components are made from china, to Mexico. Really only designed in California.The moral of the story is Apple does a great job marketing a mediocre product, and I will never ever ever pay those huge marketing fees (which are rolled into the price of the product). A lot of people refer to it as the ‘coolness tax’. The tax whereas you are not cool unless you pay apple to prove you are. I hope they don’t sue me for giving away their secrets.
cthellisApr 4, 2008
How does "iTunes completely destroy" this, when A) last figures were showing that at least half of iTunes sales were as albums, B) it's what every digital sale/rental entity does, even if you're "all-you-can-eat", C) the labels themselves have shown that most albums from online sales are still anywhere between 30-70% done so as an album.As well, are per-song-downloads "stealing" more from album sales, or are they attracting more business from people who wouldn't buy an album to begin with, or who no longer bother to pirate because they have a "good enough" legal outlet?I wish there'd be more figures released in this regard, but your analysis doesn't even attempt to go very far. Not to mention it seems an "artists' ability to make money" through online sales has been impacted far more by their labels' renegotiating contract terms to avoid compensating them nearly as much as a CD sale (those sales that make the labels more money, since there's absolutely no creation process or overhead for them). Seemingly they are unconcerned about all the time and money that goes into creating music.
rspeedApr 4, 2008
If your reason for disliking DRM is because it's hard to pirate, you can f**k off. There are plenty of reasons to hate it, but claiming the right to grossly violate copyrights is ridiculous. You have absolutely no right to bitch about as though the music companies are assh**es for watermarking unless it somehow interferes with your fair use rights.
raubyApr 4, 2008
Yes, indeed. Zunes's zuck. =)
apps123277257693179683271777baApr 18, 2011
Great stuff :-)
http://avrimusic.wordpress.com/